For most of us, home is an intricate part of our identity, a source of safety, memory, and stability.

So what happens when the place that defines you is taken away?

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Monday, December 29, 2025. As we've seen across the country

this past year, housing affordability is in crisis right now, particularly for millennials in

Gen Z. For the past year, USA Today National columnist Suzette Hackney has been exploring what

home really means by following people whose lives were reshaped by displacement,

whether by climate change, fueled superstorms or tribal politics. Through the telling of these

stories, she found that home is never just a physical space, its belonging, stability,

the foundation of life. Susette, thank you so much for coming

back on the excerpt. Hi, Dana. Thank you so much for having me. You've reported on people losing

homes for very different reasons, displacement, disenrollment, natural disaster, economic pressure.

After spending a year on this project, what do you think home really

means to people? Home is what you make of it. And so if that means being with family, if that

means having affordability, a place that they want to explore or live, that they haven't had the opportunity to do so.

Home means a lot of things to a lot of people. One of the reasons I decided to take on this

project is because I was living in Los Angeles, actually, last year. I was renting, and my landlord

decided that he wanted to sell the

property. And so all of a sudden, I was without a home. And I have the means and resources and such

to be able to jump from that. But it was a really difficult time for me. It was like something unexpected.

It was something that I had not planned for. I had not tried to figure out where I was going to move next.

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