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Judge Backs Parents, Saying Their 30-Year-Old Son Must Move Out (npr.org)
"Attention geeks living in their parents' basements!" writes PolygamousRanchKid , sharing this story from NPR:
The promise of adventure didn't do it. Neither did the lure of independence, or the weight of his 30 years. Instead, it took a judge to pry Michael Rotondo from his parents' home. The couple won an eviction order against their son, after a judge argued with Rotondo for 30 minutes. "I don't see why they can't just, you know, wait a little bit for me to leave the house," Rotondo told Donald Greenwood, a justice on the Onondaga County Supreme Court...
Christina and Mark Rotondo resorted to legal action after a series of notes to their son (starting on Feb. 2) failed to get him to move out of their home in Camillus, New York, a town west of Syracuse. Those notes followed discussions that began last October. The notes to Michael Rotondo ranged from orders to leave and encouragement to get a job, to offers of more than $1,000 and help in finding a place... The notes escalated into a formally worded notice for Rotondo to leave that set a 30-day deadline -- which lapsed on March 15...
In a legal filing cited by CNYCentral, Rotondo said that in the eight years he has lived at his parents' house, he "has never been expected to contribute to household expenses, or assisted with chores and the maintenance of the premises," and that those conditions are simply part of an informal agreement. When he was in his early 20s, Rotondo briefly lived on his own, but he moved back in with his parents after losing a job...
The case is being seen as an extreme example of a growing trend. As NPR reported in 2016, a Pew study found that, "For the first time in more than 130 years, Americans ages 18-34 are more likely to live with their parents than in any other living situation."
Christina and Mark Rotondo resorted to legal action after a series of notes to their son (starting on Feb. 2) failed to get him to move out of their home in Camillus, New York, a town west of Syracuse. Those notes followed discussions that began last October. The notes to Michael Rotondo ranged from orders to leave and encouragement to get a job, to offers of more than $1,000 and help in finding a place... The notes escalated into a formally worded notice for Rotondo to leave that set a 30-day deadline -- which lapsed on March 15...
In a legal filing cited by CNYCentral, Rotondo said that in the eight years he has lived at his parents' house, he "has never been expected to contribute to household expenses, or assisted with chores and the maintenance of the premises," and that those conditions are simply part of an informal agreement. When he was in his early 20s, Rotondo briefly lived on his own, but he moved back in with his parents after losing a job...
The case is being seen as an extreme example of a growing trend. As NPR reported in 2016, a Pew study found that, "For the first time in more than 130 years, Americans ages 18-34 are more likely to live with their parents than in any other living situation."
Home ownership, along with car ownership, is a meme designed to keep the economy going in the post-WW2 era.
For most of human history families stayed together over the course of the centuries, farming the same land over and over again. Move where? Why? People bred for the purpose of having more hands to help farm the land and someone to take care of them when they were too old and sick for manual labor.
All of the world's problems stem from the fact that human nature hasn't changed while 20th century Western Civilization tried to shoehorn it into what best suited Capitalism.
Parents have been increasingly hovering and micromanaging, being extremely overprotective. Kids are denied the freedom that used to be normal. Mostly because of fears of that ultra rare stranger abduction, or some other low probability tragedy. They think well what's the downside, what if it did happen? Well this is the downside. Adult age children unprepared to deal with real life. Problems like here, and others like anxiety, are increasing in lock step with lockdown of kids. You trade the tiny tiny chance of kidnapping or something for a very good chance of stunted development and mental health issues.
And worse, it's practically required, because busybodies think any kid walking down the street alone is a police matter, and CPS misses kids being beaten and goes after parents who let their kid walk to the park. Support laws like Utah just passed, clarifying that the normal freedom most of us over 35 had isn't neglect.
More to the point the Stereotype is that “Nerds live in the parents basement.”
Most jobs for nerds pay well enough for them to live on their own and most do.
However conditions for younger adults are much harder today then the past generations in terms of home ownership.
In areas that have the better paying jobs also have outrageous housing costs. So that home your grandparents or parents got with an adjusted for inflation salary of 50k a year job now needs 80k a year to get a similar home in some cities that has inflated to closer to 120k.
So many kids are staying at their parents house and help paying for their rent because their parents were able to get their home at a bargain compared to today. So the overall experience for somewone to pay a fair rent to their parents is lower.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
...apart from the lawsuit I guess, and with it broader awareness.
Anime watchers and those familiar with modern japanese society will already have heard of the terms: NEET, hikikomori.
But as with many problems in japanese society that often gets picked by international media as some weird thing that must only happen in Japan, this is not by far a japanese exclusive phenomena.
https://think.iafor.org/reclus...
International media often exploit, fetishize, and even mock Japan for having these weird cultural things, often painting a picture as if it was commonplace there when it really isn't... but the truth behind this mocking of foreign countries is that more often than not, these things not only do exist back at home, but often it's worse than in Japan - only it's taboo, overlooked by press, and not selected as a subject for exposure.
So yeah... this guy is probably one of these cases. Surprise, bad stuff that happens in other societies is probably happening in sacred US of A too. And probably, a lawsuit is not the best way to deal with it too. Not that I'm ignoring the tribulation that the parents must've gone through already, but hikikomori are often unstable and should be seeking treatment and re-education, not being booted out of home.
There is a high potential of this being a case of throwing gas into the fire. Optimistic scenario, sure, the guy will leave home, get a job and reform himself. But people in the US really should not ignore the potential of someone mentally unstable becoming enraged with the situation and turning into yet another nightmare scenario that we all know pretty well by now having multiple cases a year. He could take his parents money, buy a gun, a go shoot some people plus himself.
... did was kick me out when I was 19, 5 months after I was out of high school.
"You're learning a job. I don't care what. Wanna do performing arts? Ok, fine by me, you've got the talent. But you're moving out by end of summer. Get those applications rolling." -My mom, paraphrased.
I was doing performing arts 6 months later, in a big town 300 km away. She drove me there, in her Citroen Charleston De Cheveau. She told me a few years back that she had to pull over and cry for while on the way back, but she knew it was the very best thing to do. ... Smart lady, my mom is.
Best move ever. ... All because I was pushed on to the trail that made me become a grown man. ...
6 months in I felt better than ever before in my life, doing my own thing my own way. These days I'm a man with a grown daughter traveling South America for 9 months flat at the age of 20 and have a SO I love and respect, that fucks like a pornstar.
Love you, Mom.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Every word in your post is wrong. The trend of kids failing to launch has little or nothing to do with economics and everything to do with lazy parenting and kids who just don't have any desire for independence.
The first part of your post is at least close to correct, but your whole tirade about lazy parents and young adults is simply ignorant. There are many reasons why more kids are living with their parents and it is true that economics is not the only reason. Still a significant reason, with student loans growing rapidly and many essentials (housing, health care, etc) rising above inflation for decades, but not the only one. The simple fact that employed young adults are far less likely to live at home than unemployed ones shows economics is a large factor.
This article summarizes many of them. Young adults waiting longer to get married is one factor. But the most interesting one is that young adults simply have a much better relationship with their parents today than they did 30 years ago. One finding was that in 1986 half of parents reported speaking with their grown child in the past week, whereas in 2008 87% had. Many young adults don't feel the need to move out because they have a friendlier relationship than previous generations did.
My wife and her two siblings lived at home for around five years each after college. Not because of a failure to launch, as each had degrees and were employed in their chosen fields. They did it because it helped spring board their financial lives by saving for a full 20% down payment on their first home. My father in law took 75% of their take home pay for "rent" and put it in a savings account. So not every situation where kids live with their parents is a bad one.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
However conditions for younger adults are much harder today then the past generations in terms of home ownership.
Home ownership has been overpromoted for decades in this country, and the reality of it is finally sinking in (not necessarily for this kid, but for our country in general). We have multiple cable networks that are still effectively acting as marketing outfits for realtors, hyping home ownership as an investment 24x7.
What is finally happening though, now that we again have a reasonably normal real estate market, is that people are finding they are not actually making money on their homes. You spend $20k on a kitchen renovation and then 10 years later you sell your house for $5k more than you paid; losing $15k in the process. On top of that you were paying homeowner's insurance the entire time, paying interest on your mortgage, paying to keep up your lawn, driveway, roof, exterior, interior, etc. People are waking up to the fact that houses are in fact really terrible investments. If you want to save money you're better off renting and putting the difference into even a CD (if you are risk-averse) or a balanced stock market account (if you are more risk-tolerant). But we've been told for so long that a house is a great investment, and a lot of people are stuck with that mindset because it was repeated as gospel.
Even people who are currently retiring and selling homes they lived in for 30+ years (having therefore paid off their mortgages years ago) are finding they aren't getting back as much as they had imagined. They bought for $40k, sold for $220k, which sounds great. Except they actually paid closer to $90k with interest over those 30 years. And they spent at least another $20k over those years on homeowner's insurance. They spent thousands on roofing and carpet, and lawn maintenance. They did their kitchen, bathroom, etc. The actual return looked like $180k but really was much closer to $30k once all this is deducted, which is a pretty lousy ROI for 30+ years.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It did. And he is. I was forced out at 20, unemployed. I got my shit together fast. And I was a high school dropout. No job was too menial, after all, starving and freezing weren't long term options. Yes, I did get a little help after a month being homeless, and I found a job a week after I was given shelter. That was 40 years ago. The lesson? I'm not entitled, I have to work for what I have. Period.