Gen Z, Millennials Can Overcome Rootlessness By Moving Home

Shortly after the Civil War, Horace Greeley urged ambitious young men to “Go West.”

“Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable,” he is credited with writing in 1865. “Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”

A champion of Manifest Destiny, Greeley saw the frontier as an escape from urban slums and a shot at adventure and opportunity. Today the West is settled, yet the zeitgeist is calling young people away from the city again — this time not toward expansion, but restoration; not to new lands, but familiar soil.

Millennials were buying first homes and starting families in or near major cities when Covid-19 hit. Cities endured the harshest lockdowns, post-George Floyd violence, surging crime, emptied offices, spiked rents, and a collapse in meaning and mental health. For many, the city has become, as it was in Greeley’s time, inhospitable to young people.

But the answer today is not to “Go West.” The answer is to go home: to the places that raised us; to the neighborhoods, churches, and schools that shaped our values; to the people who forged our characters; to the places that now need us. That is our generation’s destiny. 

A Familiar Journey

My life trajectory mirrors that of many millennials. I grew up in a working-class manufacturing town in Indiana. I left home to attend college and, like many my age, chased opportunity to a major city. There, I worked a good job, met my wife — whose hometown fortuitously was just an hour from mine — and we eventually bought a house in a suburb and started a family.

City life had real benefits. We encountered new ideas and people constantly, attended strong graduate programs that enabled career changes in our early 30s, and easily made friends among the many young people there. Yet it never quite felt like home. The transience — of others and ourselves — left us with one foot out the door.

When I was 28 years old, my grandmother passed away. She had been my closest relative. She never graduated from high school, spent most of her life as a homemaker, and later was the janitor of our church. But she was very active in our town as a Sunday school teacher, a volunteer with the animal shelter and other causes for the needy, and a general positive influence to those around her. After my graduation, she had moved away to retire, but came back home because she missed her friends and the community.

When she passed, her funeral was standing-room only. Two hundred people from across the community had come to pay their respects to a woman who had touched their lives in some way. One young man told me that when he was a boy she had encouraged him to pursue the ministry. Others shared stories of small kindnesses that had shaped their lives.

That moment changed me. Here was a woman with no prestigious career and no advanced degree, but who had lived a life that clearly mattered to her community. She had roots. I realized what I was missing was a deep connection to place.

Purpose in Place

Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that Americans “pursue well-being” with a “feverish ardor,” and are “constantly tormented by a vague fear of not having chosen the shortest route that can lead to it.” He saw the same tension I felt: Americans are restless, forever chasing opportunity just beyond the horizon with the very energy Greeley channeled when he urged young men westward. Yet Tocqueville also knew that the real strength of American democracy lay not in distant capitals but in local communities — townships, churches, civic associations — where people learn responsibility, self-government, and the bonds of civic friendship.

When people are rooted in their communities — when they know their neighbors, take on responsibilities, and engage in civic life — they develop the habits of self-government. Modern research confirms what Tocqueville observed: strong social ties and a sense of belonging are among the most powerful predictors of long-term happiness.

As I did, many millennials and Gen Zers feel that something is missing from their lives. We were encouraged to leave home, collect credentials, move to the city, and build impressive resumes. Doing so gave us opportunity and experience, but it often left us unrooted.

Perhaps the answer to our search for meaning is simple: return home, lead locally, replant roots, raise your family, and rebuild the institutions that sustain a meaningful life.

A New Manifest Destiny

The Manifest Destiny of Horace Greeley was about expansion. The Manifest Destiny of our generation is about restoration.

Over the past 50 years, America has experienced the slow erosion of its industrial heartland. Factories closed, small towns hollowed out, and the communities that once built America’s industrial might were left behind in an era of globalization. This deindustrialization didn’t just cost jobs; it eroded dignity, weakened communities, and left places searching for purpose.

Millennials and Gen Z left home for education and opportunity, acquiring skills, careers, and networks. Now is the time to bring them home: to rebuild local economies, reindustrialize the heartland, steward family farms, and strengthen the civic institutions Tocqueville called the foundation of American freedom. 

This is how we reclaim purpose in our own lives and renewal in our communities. This is how we rebuild America: from the bottom up.

When my family and I returned to Northwest Indiana after serving in the federal government, something clicked into place. We bought a house not far from where I grew up. My son now swims in the same lake where I spent my summers. I know my neighbors, and they know me. I ran for a local township office. I serve on nonprofit boards. I became a volunteer fireman and Cub Scout leader. I am using the skills I developed while away from home to improve the community that raised me. And it has brought a quiet, enduring happiness that city life never matched. This is not nostalgia; it is a blueprint.

Meaning waits in hometowns, Rust Belt towns, and farm towns. So to my fellow millennials and Gen Zers: Go home. Raise kids near grandparents, mentor local youth, rebuild your town.

The old frontier called us outward; the new one calls us inward to unfinished work. The next American renaissance begins when a generation decides to go home — and stay.

Nate Uldricks is Chair of Pine Township in his native Porter County, Indiana and a candidate for Indiana State Senate. He previously served as a senior official at the White House and US Department of Defense.