Harnois is an elementary school teacher in Boston Public Schools; together she and her husband make $175,000 a year. And their monthly rental costs are modest, considerably less than the typical household around here.

“If homes here cost $400,000, we’d be homeowners,” said Harnois, who is 32.

Such is reality now for Greater Boston’s next generation, particularly younger and middle class people.

The cost of buying a home has been steadily rising for decades, and recently it has exploded, growing far faster than incomes.

The typical house in Greater Boston sold for $833,900 in the second quarter of 2025, more than 7.5 times the region’s median household income. Five years ago, a household needed to earn $126,519 a year to afford the median-priced single-family home in this region, according to an analysis by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to $259,648.

The result is people who 20, 10, or even 5 years ago would have been able to purchase a home — teachers, nurses, and academics — can hardly even conceive of it.

“The door to homeownership in the Boston area has really been shut,” said Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard’s housing studies center. “There are hundreds of thousands of people here staring at these numbers saying, ‘Who can actually afford this?’ ”

The consequences are being felt by an entire generation, forced to make a choice their parents did not: Stay in Massachusetts, and rent forever, or leave, and put down roots somewhere less expensive.

“We work really hard, and we feel like we’ve done everything right,” said Harnois. “It is difficult to accept that there is no pathway for us to own a home in the neighborhood I’ve spent my whole life in.”

Since the 1940s, when the 30-year mortgage emerged and made home buying more accessible to many workers, owning a home has been a symbol of success. To achieve the American dream was to work hard, save up, and buy a house, which would serve as both a stable home and a valuable asset that would appreciate with time. For many working class families in Massachusetts, homeownership was the ticket to the middle class.

It was exactly that path that Ben Watts hoped to follow.

Growing up, Watts’s parents did not own their home, a fact he became aware of when he visited friends’ houses as a kid. As he got older, he came to assume that he, someday, would.

“It was ingrained,” said Watts. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”

Now his goal has collided with economic reality. Watts, who is 33, works three jobs — as a bartender and for a French spirits company — and earns nearly $90,000 a year. His rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Belmont, which he splits with his fiancé, is $2,850.

Watts has effectively given up on owning a home. He can hardly find any listings on Zillow for less than $700,000, at least not ones that look like they wouldn’t require tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance. At that cost, Watts would be more than doubling his monthly housing payment, and likely paying at least half of his income toward a mortgage. And that’s after a six-figure down payment, cash he simply does not have.

The prevailing feeling, he said, is resentment.

“I’m being priced out because I’m working to try and make the city that I love better with great bars and restaurants,” said Watts, who grew up in Arlington. “It feels like I’m being told that there’s no place for me here anymore.”

Perhaps what is most frustrating to people like Watts: They know it wasn’t always like this.

Home prices have been on the rise for decades. But the biggest shift in housing affordability began in the aftermath of the pandemic, as home prices rose even faster, and mortgage rates more than doubled, leaving prospective buyers to pay both sky-high total price tags and huge monthly payments.

In 2010, for example, the median home price was $360,800, but the average on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.75 percent, meaning the mortgage payment on that median-priced house was only $1,816 a month, almost the same as it was in 2000. Now, with a median house price of $833,900, and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage around 6.79 percent in the second quarter of the year, the monthly mortgage payment on that median-priced house is $5,240 a month — before homeowners insurance, property tax, and mortgage insurance, which can tack on $1,500 more each month.

The shift is pricing a startling number of would-be homeowners out of the market. Roughly 100,000 people who made enough money to afford an entry-level home in 2021 could no longer afford that home in 2025, according to data from Boston Indicators.

“Tell me how many people can afford to buy an almost million dollar single-family home?” said Gail Latimore, executive director of the Codman Square Community Development Corporation. “Tell me how many people can afford to buy an $800,000 house and pay $5,000 a month for the mortgage? We’ve always been an expensive area, but this is unmanageable.”

What happens when so many people are priced out of homeownership all at once?

Right now, a generational wealth divide is emerging, said Albert Saiz, an associate professor of urban economics and real estate at MIT.

While 50 years ago, nearly half of young adults age 25 to 34 in Massachusetts owned a home, today barely one-third do, and a recent analysis by Boston Indicators suggests the true rate is even lower, roughly 24 percent. Those people who were able to buy in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s have seen their investments turn into a launching pad for generational wealth: Those homes, in many cases, are now million-dollar nest eggs that have double or tripled in value, particularly in Boston and its suburbs.

“Unless we do something about housing stock — building, building, building — this is a dangerous situation for working class folks who used to depend on housing as their main way to accumulate wealth,” said Saiz.

Take Coire Jones, 38, who makes almost $50,000 doing administrative work at a real estate law firm. Jones sets aside roughly $200 a month, mostly by cutting out extraneous spending, and by choosing to rent a small room in an apartment in Somerville for just $750 a month.

This is not how he pictured things going. Jones’s family has been in Massachusetts for generations, and he loves it here. He graduated from college with a history degree in 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession, and struggled to find a job.

He’s now switched career paths and found stable income. But Jones can do the math. He knows that at his current income, he’ll never be able to afford even a tiny home of his own.

“We millennials were told that you could be whatever you wanted to be and if you went to college you’d be in the middle class,” he said. “I don’t mind renting for the rest of my life. But the foundation of the American economy is that everyone buys a house, and that equity allows you to do a lot of different things and achieve financial stability. And that no longer exists for my generation.”

That doesn’t stop people from trying.

Every year, 200 to 250 people enroll in first-time homebuyer classes at the Chinatown-based Asian Community Development Corporation, one of countless groups that aim to teach would-be buyers the ropes of mortgages, property inspection, and other intricacies of the biggest investment most people will ever make.

In previous years, it was common for 20 to 40 people who took the class to purchase a home, said Angie Liou, the Asian CDC’s executive director. Last year, only six did.

Latimore, of the Codman Square CDC, said a lucky few are able to purchase with the help of down payment and mortgage assistance programs sponsored by the city and other public entities.

Those who aren’t able to buy are left to grapple with what it means that they may never access homeownership.

Some, like Harnois, are willing to stick it out as renters. She is too connected to the neighborhood where she grew up and today works in to consider leaving.

And then there are people like Lillian Rotondo, an East Cambridge resident who works in biotech sales. She said she can’t quite believe the prices of the homes she sees on the market.

She has a familiar story: She and her husband, a chef who works in the Seaport, make good money — roughly $240,000 a year. But it still doesn’t feel like enough to afford a $600,000 or $700,000 place, especially because Rotondo is pregnant with their first child, which they know will be expensive in its own way.

Rotondo’s parents migrated to the US from El Salvador with $20 to their name, she said. Years later, they were able to save up enough to buy a home on Long Island.

It’s important to Rotondo, who is 40, to do the same. And because they cannot afford it here, Rotondo and her husband are going to move, most likely to Rhode Island, somewhere near Providence.

“We have worked hard our entire lives,’ she said. ”We should be able to afford a two-bedroom. So we’ll go somewhere we can.”

Andrew Brinker can be reached at andrew.brinker@globe.com. Follow him @andrewnbrinker.

Hundreds of people from Boston’s homeless community were treated to a warm, restaurant-style holiday meal Christmas Day at St. Francis House, and it was all made possible by a $25,000 donation from a family in Medfield.

The day shelter, the largest of its type in all of New England, hosted the annual celebration for what they estimated to be between 400 and 500 guests.

President and CEO of St. Francis House, Karen LaFrazia, says the large donation from the Medfield family not only funded the Christmas meal, but also another event and hundreds of gifts the night before.

“Today, we actually had a donor family that completely underwrote all of the costs of our entire Christmas dinner,” LaFrazia told the Herald. “Yesterday, we had a special event on Christmas Eve where we passed out Christmas presents for everybody, so everybody came through and they got their choice of a backpack and a choice of a sweatshirt and a gift card so they can spend on what they want and what they need. And it was completely underwritten by a generous family.

“They are our Christmas angel,” she added. “The mother in this family used to come here when she was in high school and she would volunteer. She’s in a fortunate place right now, her and her family, so they’re able to give back in a very meaningful way.”

But it appears that a notable amount of regular St. Francis House donors have been diving deeper into their pockets than ever before, according to VP of Philanthropy and External Relations Andrew Russell.

“Increasingly, this year, we have seen an enormous amount of our donors leaping in their giving. So, for example, this family from Medfield had been giving us $1,000 per year until this year, when they gave us a $25,000 donation. Donors who had been giving $5,000 per year have been giving $50,000 per year. So, it’s heartwarming to see,” Russell said.

The warm, festive environment offered guests what staff say is a “moment of dignity,” paired with a chance to escape from the daily burdens many have been experiencing in their day-to-day lives.

Jason Tench, who tells the Herald he’s been homeless for “a long time,” says he seeks services at St. Francis House because staff “really, truly care.”

“These people care a lot more [than most shelter services]. They come in every day and they appreciate us, which makes us appreciate them. It’s not just a job to them. They understand and they really, truly care. And it shows in the incredible work they do for us,” said Tench.

“It means a lot,” said Stephen Gonzalo, another homeless guest of St. Francis House. “I think this is where Jesus would want to be. It’s my first time here and luckily for me its on Christmas Day with this amazing meal and good people.”

Russell, the VP at St. Francis House, said the increase in donations — which allows St. Francis House to offer events like the Christmas meal — come as a blessing.

He says aside from special events, the extra cash is needed now more than ever, especially as the housing crisis paired with soaring utility costs in Massachusetts continues to make life unaffordable for residents.

“There’s more and more people that are coming in, whether it be seniors or young people that are on restricted incomes and if their rent goes up they can’t afford food or electricity, and people are forced to make difficult choices. So, the housing crisis definitely is playing a big part in the number of people we’re seeing on a daily basis,” Russell told the Herald. “We’re now up over 500 guests per day, every day. When you go back to 2023, we were seeing 7,000 people per year. The last two years we’ve been seeing 10,000 people per year.”

Homeless guest Arsenio Borges tells the Herald that he’s seen firsthand the help and support offered on a daily basis by St. Francis House, crediting the organization with helping him find housing for the first time in years.

“I think this is great. I live at the 112 Southampton Street shelter and this place has been incredible with how much they’ve helped me out. They actually just helped me get my Massachusetts ID so I can get housing finally. They’ve gotten clothing for me, shoes, socks, everything. So, they do help a lot,” said Borges.

As she enters her 19th year at St. Francis House, LaFrazia says the goal of the annual Christmas meal remains the same: to offer guests dignity, a warm meal and hope as they work to get through the challenges they face.

“I’ve been talking to our guests this morning and some of them have been reminiscing about Christmases past, when days were better for them and its bringing for them, a sadness,” said LaFrazia. “But, there’s also a little bit of joy for them to be here with friends and with staff that know they care about them and love them and us to give them a message of hope for the new year that things can and will get better.”

Boston Celtics (18-11, third in the Eastern Conference) vs. Indiana Pacers (6-24, 14th in the Eastern Conference)

Indianapolis; Friday, 7 p.m. EST

BOTTOM LINE: Indiana aims to end its three-game home slide with a win against Boston.

The Pacers have gone 4-14 against Eastern Conference teams. Indiana is 5-12 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 13.1 turnovers per game.

The Celtics are 14-8 in conference games. Boston ranks sixth in the NBA with 12.6 offensive rebounds per game led by Neemias Queta averaging 3.1.

The Pacers are shooting 42.9% from the field this season, 1.6 percentage points lower than the 44.5% the Celtics allow to opponents. The Celtics average 15.6 made 3-pointers per game this season, 4.1 more made shots on average than the 11.5 per game the Pacers allow.

The teams play for the second time this season. The Celtics won the last meeting 103-95 on Dec. 23. Jaylen Brown scored 31 points to help lead the Celtics to the win.

TOP PERFORMERS: Pascal Siakam is averaging 23.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.9 assists for the Pacers. T.J. McConnell is averaging 16.0 points over the last 10 games.

Payton Pritchard is shooting 43.9% and averaging 16.8 points for the Celtics. Derrick White is averaging 3.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.

LAST 10 GAMES: Pacers: 2-8, averaging 108.0 points, 40.7 rebounds, 22.7 assists, 7.2 steals and 5.4 blocks per game while shooting 44.1% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 115.9 points per game.

Celtics: 8-2, averaging 118.3 points, 43.5 rebounds, 22.7 assists, 8.1 steals and 5.3 blocks per game while shooting 49.0% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 108.6 points.

INJURIES: Pacers: Obi Toppin: out (foot), Ben Sheppard: day to day (calf), Isaiah Jackson: day to day (head), Aaron Nesmith: out (knee), Tyrese Haliburton: out for season (achilles).

Celtics: Jayson Tatum: out (achilles), Jordan Walsh: day to day (illness).

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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.