Having parents, kids and grandparents under one roof is a growing trend, and often means reconfiguring living spaces and lives, says Audrey Hoffer for the Washington Post.
The trend has taken off since the Recession, and economic constraints may have a lot to do with the increase in this kind of living arrangement.
In 2009, the last year of the Great Recession, 17 percent of Americans lived in households that were multigenerational, says D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer and editor at Pew Research Center. This translates to 51.5 million people living in homes with either grandparents and grandchildren, or with two or more adult generations. Pew’s estimates are based on census data. In 2016, the most recent Pew numbers, 20 percent of Americans — 64 million people — lived in multigenerational homes. “This is a record number of people,” Cohn said.
Kim Adams, director of marketing for the Brambleton Group, said she’s seeing an uptick in multigenerational families. “Builders are adapting their home designs to create additional living spaces that offer privacy and separation for parents or college students moving back home, and ground floor suites for easy access for grandparents,” she said. “We believe this trend will continue.”
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