Why it sucks to be a millennial in Seattle We love Seattle, but Seattle doesn't always love us

A single-family home built in 2007 standing next to a new multi-family building in Ballard is emblematic of the "new Seattle." Too bad millennials won't be able to afford either of them. A single-family home built in 2007 standing next to a new multi-family building in Ballard is emblematic of the "new Seattle." Too bad millennials won't be able to afford either of them. Photo: GENNA MARTIN/SEATTLEPI.COM Photo: GENNA MARTIN/SEATTLEPI.COM Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Why it sucks to be a millennial in Seattle 1 / 29 Back to Gallery

In case anyone needed validation that millennials are facing some of the harshest economic conditions of any generation coming of age in modern memory, look no further than the Huffington Post.

The site's online magazine, Highline, which covers "stories that stay with you," lived up to the promise with "FML." The article explains "why the millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression."

RELATED: Which Seattle neighborhoods can you afford to live in?

Among the many, many chronicles of the perverse economic landscape that millennials are inheriting ("The circumstances we live in are more dire than most people realize," writer Michael Hobbes, himself a former-Seattleite, notes), is the anecdote of Tyrone.

Tyrone was homeless for four years in Georgia before moving up to Seattle six years ago, when he was 23, because of our high minimum wage ("Almost double what he'd made in Atlanta," from what he'd heard). When he first got here he got a job at a grocery store and slept in a shelter until he had saved enough to live elsewhere. Now his income is up, but he's been moved further and further outside the city: First to Kirkland, then Tacoma, and now Lakewood.

His rent is $1,100 and he earns $17 an hour as a security guard. Since he's a contractor, he doesn't get sick leave or health insurance. And the bills keep piling up from there, as Hobbes reports:

(The rent is) more than he can afford, but he could only find one building that would let him move in without paying the full deposit in advance. Since rent is due on the 1st and he gets paid on the 7th, his landlord adds a $100 late fee to each month's bill. After that and the car payments—it's a two-hour bus ride from the suburb where he lives to the suburb where he works—he has $200 left over every month for food. ...Despite the acres of news pages dedicated to the narrative that millennials refuse to grow up, there are twice as many young people like Tyrone—living on their own and earning less than $30,000 per year—as there are millennials living with their parents. The crisis of our generation cannot be separated from the crisis of affordable housing.

Perhaps no pressure for millennials has felt as pressing as that last sentence; it's the hottest housing market in the country, and we can't afford it in the slightest.

Among the dour headlines about Seattle's affordability problems from just the past two weeks: Twenty-eight percent of working-aged adults in the Seattle metro live with roommates in order to afford the neighborhood. Seattle ranks no. 70 among U.S. cities with the most minority home owners, with the average minority in Seattle having to save for 14.3 years in order to afford a down payment.

The lack of new single-family home construction was the biggest surprise in the 2017 market, and it's a trend experts don't expect will change in the coming year, which will likely drive home prices up even further.

But still, millennials are apparently optimistic about the future of the city – even though that's just the housing tip of the iceberg.

We've compiled a list of more than a few reasons it sucks to be a millennial coming up in Seattle at the moment. Click through the slideshow above to see why.