Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Median Income & Affordable Housing

[Diane Simpson (coho]

This is assuming that there are an awful lot of "families of four" out 
there looking for housing. This is not the case. American households 
have gotten a lot smaller in the past few decades. The census bureau 
divides households up into "family" and "nonfamily" units. Since 1970 
the proportion of the population comprised of married couples with 
children decreased, and the proportion of single mothers increased, and 
the median age at first marriage went up. Growth in the number of 
households slowed dramatically in the 1990's.  In 1970 81% of all 
households were family households; in 2000 they were only 69% of all 
households. In 1970 married couple households with children made up 40% 
of the population. In 2000 they were only 24% of the population. The 
majority of the increase in nonfamily households  is due to the growth 
of one-person households. Between 1970 and 2000, households with five 
or more people decreased from 21% to 10% of all households. During the 
same period the share of households with only one or two people 
increased from 46% to 59% of all households. Between 1970 and 2000 the 
average number of people per household decreased from 3.14 to 2.62. In 
addition to this, families are smaller nowadays. The percentage of 
family groups with children that have four or more children decreased 
from 17% in 1970 to about 6% in 2000.

If you look at the census chart for the year 2000 you will notice that:
24.1% are married couples with children
28.7% are married couples without children
16.0% are "other family" households
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
10.7% are men living alone
14.8% are women living alone
5.7% are "other nonfamily" households

family households: 68.8%
nonfamily households: 31.2%


Households by size: (2000)
5 people or more: 10.4%
4 people: 14.6%
3 people: 16.4%
2 people: 33.1%
1 person: 25.5%

So the smaller households (1 or 2 people) make up 58.6% or the 
population and the larger households ( 3 or more people) make up 41.4% 
of the population. But let's take a look at the 3-person households for 
a minute. We saw above that family households are 68.8% of the 
population--so some of these 3-person households are families with 
children. 24.1% of "family" households are families with children 
(about 1/3). What if 1/3 of the 3-person households were families with 
2 kids? They could easily live in a 2-bedroom. Then you would have:
1-person 25.5%
2 people 33.1%
3-people families with 2 kids 5.5%

for a total of 64.1% of the population fitting into a 2-bedroom or 
smaller unit (just under 2/3 of the population.)

--Diane Simpson

JP COHOUSING  617-524-6614
P.O. BOX 420 BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
HTTP://WWW.JPCOHOUSING.ORG


On Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 11:56 AM, Sharon Villines wrote:

> If we assume that a "family" of four needs at least two bedrooms and 
> would
> be most comfortable with three, cohousing as it is being built would 
> not be
> within reach of probably two-thirds of the American population.
>
> Sharon






"The people who surround you define the qualify of your life."

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