Comment by zer00eyz

> Wouldn’t measuring dynamics of home ownership using a unit “households” cause all sorts of problems?

I had the same impression at first as well. But a household is a household is a household. That massive increase in people living alone follows the same 60/40 split on ownership that more "traditional" married couples would.

The affordability of housing has changed since the 60's, 70's and 80's. And it's what your intuition is picking up on. And it does relate to what is a household, but not because it's a poor measure but because the housing stock we have no longer matches how we use housing.

If you go back to 1985, the boomers were in their prime years and housing was much more affordable than today. The greatest generation was dying off, and in their golden years they lived together (The literal plot of golden girls), in homes or moved in with kids.

The boomers are NOT doing that. They are occupying multi bedroom housing stock, as couples or alone. This has created much of their wealth and lots of price pressure on younger generations. The millennials will tell you "housing was worse for them" and it was: the two large cohorts competing for the limited supply, and one was deeply entrenched already.

Do note that boomers aren't the only ones "living alone more" its a fairly equal distribution but they have the first mover advantage, historic pricing advantage, and tend to be the ones occupying multi bedroom housing alone creating the utilization pressure.

And the Golden Girls type living situations are unviable today for legal reasons. Overly broad tenants rights have killed the concept of co-habitation (roomates/housemates) turning 2,3, and 4 bedroom houses into single family homes, and zoning + tenants rights have finished off the boarding house (there might be hand full left in the US, this was the plot of another 80's tv series).

Telling The boomers to move in with the millennials is going to be massively unpopular with both groups. Telling renters that "you get less rights" is going to be politically impossible (even if it is only for 'housemates' situations). Death or a major change to Americans political will are the only fixes that we are going to see.