A New Vision

American dream changing for some Coloradans

BY CHRISTY STEADMAN CSTEADMAN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Amber Carlson is a Colorado native. She loves the Denver area for all its amenities — from outdoor recreation to the arts-and-culture scene. But with so many other people moving to the region because they also love those things, Carlson would consider moving away.

“I don’t blame people for wanting to live here,” she said. “It’s got a lot going on.”

Carlson doesn’t want to uproot from Colorado, but if she did, it would be because of the region’s skyrocketing cost of living.

“It’s di cult when you’ve lived here your whole life and it has become hard to stay,” she said.

Carlson is in her 30s. She went to Denver’s George Washington High School and is currently in graduate school at the University of ColoradoBoulder. She lives with her partner in a house in Wheat Ridge that he owns, a situation she feels fortunate to have. Otherwise, Carlson said, she is not sure if she would be able to a ord a rental on her own.

Her experience leaves her with questions about the idea of the American dream — owning a home. It is, for many, a dream of a single- family home on a private plot of land in the suburbs, maybe with a picket fence and tire swing hanging from a lofty tree.

But younger people are changing their perceptions about what the American dream should be. Driving that change is the increasingly una ordable nature of housing, according to a few surveys, including one by Bankrate last year. It found that two-thirds of respondents cite a ordability as a major hurdle to homeownership. eir pinch points included everything from salaries that didn’t keep up to a lack of ability to save for down payments to high mortgage rates.

‘The American dream has decreased in relevance’

James Truslow Adams, a writer and historian, is credited with coining the term “the American dream” in 1931 — early in the Great Depression — in his book, “ e Epic of America.”

“ e American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement,” Adams wrote. “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Carlson re ects on all of that. She said that people began to conceptualize how to get their American dream — go to college, get a good job and buy a home — in the postWorld War II era.

“ ere was this idea that you could have all of this,” Carlson said.

More Americans these days, she said, are de ning success on their own terms. More folks might see homeownership as a relic, even something that holds them back in life, rather than necessary for all of their needs and desires.

“Buying a home is probably something that some people want,” Carlson said. “But I don’t think everybody wants or needs to buy a home.”

Others are holding onto the old idea. Bankrate found that homeownership remains a persistent part of the American dream. Homeownership is the “most-mentioned milestone” for Americans 26 and older, but younger Americans see it as less important. Gen Z, aged 18-25, doesn’t rank it as the top accomplishment like older Americans tend to.

Gen Z member Caitlyn Aldersea, a student at the University of Denver, is representative of the changing attitude.

She remembers as a young child how the Great Recession that began in 2007 a ected her family.

“ e American dream today is