Here’s How Cleveland Ranks For Millennial Families

CLEVELAND — With more millennials hitting life milestones such as marriage and moving into new homes, the housing-servicing website Porch set out to find which U.S. cities were the best and worst for starting a young family. The results were not kind to Cleveland.

Porch used data from American FactFinder, Yelp, and Zillow to rank the cities based on three key metrics: percentage of millennials, the average cost of a two-bedroom rental, and the caliber of child day care.

It turns out Cleveland has not attracted very many millennials. Cleveland ranked in the bottom 10 percent for millennial families. However, the city scored well on affordability metrics and on price of rent metrics.

Cleveland was dinged in other areas, most notably child care costs. The average cost of childcare in Northeast Ohio is more than $5,000. That’s significantly higher than other cities, including neighboring hubs like Pittsburgh.

Seattle earned the coveted top spot in the overall scorecard for millennial families, with Portland and Baltimore rounding out the top three. None of the top three overall cities however had the highest percentage of millennial residents, as Austin, Texas, finished first with 27.2 percent of its population.

Cities in California dominated the most expensive two-bedroom homes list: San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles were the top three costliest metro areas in the U.S.

The report also put an emphasis on the millennial generation forging a different path into adulthood than previous generations.

“Millennials on the other hand, aren’t tying the knot, are having fewer kids, and are remaining in the city longer,” said the research team at Porch. “The younger generation has even remodeled the home of the American dream — the white picket fence has been replaced with an ocean view.”

Detroit ranked as the worst city for young families, with a combination of a low population of millennials, a lack of available child care resources, and a consistently high cost of housing.

Here are the top ten overall cities for millennials:

  1. Seattle
  2. Portland
  3. Baltimore
  4. New Orleans
  5. Austin
  6. Washington D.C.
  7. San Francisco
  8. San Diego
  9. San Jose
  10. Columbus