You’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat

You’re going to need a bigger boat, er house.

 

The Census Bureau recently released a report on the number of shared households,  (‘a household with at least one resident adult  not enrolled  in school who isn’t the householder, spouse or cohabiting partner of the householder). In non-bureaucrat-ese, it essentially means people living with either roommates or relatives.  Unsurprisingly, these households significantly increased from 2007-2010, coinciding with the aftermath of the Great Recession. The report provides some additional evidence that moving back in with relatives or roommates was an essential lifeline:

Higher personal poverty rates for those heading shared households suggests  that this group has fewer individual resources than their counterparts.  However, lower official and household poverty rates among householders heading shared households  suggest that household sharing  lessened economic strain. {..} the official poverty rate for young adults aged 25 to 34 living with parents was 8.4 percent  in 2010, but if poverty status was determined by personal income, 45.3 percent would have been in poverty.

Think about that for a moment – poverty among 25 to 34 year olds would have been almost five and half times greater without the ability to share living expenses. The aftermath of the recession has featured plenty of stories about downward mobility, but this data illustrates the degree to which sharing housing expenses wards off financial calamity.  The economy has a long way before it fully recovers and developers already seem to be anticipating the need for more multi-generational housing:

“This is a niche area that appears to be solid and growing,” Stephen Melman, director of economic services at the Washington-based National Association of Home Builders, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a demographic thing.” {…} “The past few years is really about economic hardship,” Yun said. “More people in multigenerational households just means there are more people under one roof.”

Home sizes have generally increased over the past forty years, but their suitability for mult-generational housing usually leaves something to be desired. As people continue to struggle financially, more families might decide pooling their resources is the only available life-preserver.

Reverse Gentrify Us, Please.

Your opinion on gentrification most likely depends not only on your social class, but the wider conditions of your city. The word probably has divergent connotations for a denizen of Brooklyn than a  resident of Gary, Indiana. Richey Piiparinen at The Rust Wire recently highlighted a case of reverse gentrification in Cleveland :

” there is a displacement that’s been going on in Rust Belt cities for some time now. It goes like this:minorities are leaving inner city areas in droves, with folks seeing a depressed housing market in suburbia as their best chance at the American Dream. For instance, in Cleveland, one-fifth (43,342) of the city’s black residents left the historically black East Side over the last decade. During that same time, the number of black residents in Cuyahoga County suburbs increased by 30,206, whereas the historically white West Side added 11,029.

In fact, in terms of creating mixed neighborhoods, this is usually the model—turning the talking points of gentrification on its head.”

The dynamic is completely different in areas with a weak regional housing market.  Sky-high vacancy rates and abandoned property make the idea of long-time residents being “forced out” patently ridiculous. The decline of the traditional industrial economy helped do that, not white hipsters. Some of these neighborhood’s mottos may as well be “For the Love of God, Please Gentrify Us Already.”  Piiparinen concludes:

“Maybe these Rust Belt neighborhoods are but a time and place in which the least demand for property is creating spaces that are existing outside of traditional market forces, thus allowing human interactions to evolve that would otherwise be stifled by money’s segregating impact. {…}

Or maybe the consequence of extreme economic ruin is creating pockets of life in the rubble that can somehow foster the proof of a new way.”

I love the sentiment of the former, but I think I lean towards the latter explanation. Desperation is going to force residents of these cities to try new things. If hipsters want to set up food trucks and urban farms in poor neighborhoods, no one with any sense is going to discourage them.