Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 141, Issue 27

[William New (wnew]

> On Oct 24, 2015, at 3:16 AM,Catya Belfer <catya [at] pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> twenty-something renter in my house and it’s GREAT to have him as a member of 
> my household / my community.

I too have a Millennial living in our three-generation household, and agree 
that this is a very positive contribution to provide an extra driver, extra 
muscle, extra cook, and extra pet care within our extended family.  Indeed for 
white-hair seniors like myself planning to age-in-place, they are a wonderful 
addition.

Increasingly, Millennials are living with parents/extended families or other 
group arrangement rather than forming their own independent households:

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/07/29/more-millennials-living-with-family-despite-improved-job-market/?

There is beneficial synergy here where retired elders provide the housing 
(often an empty-nest large home) and the youngsters provide physical help and 
household income, especially where housing is very expensive in full-employment 
high-demand areas (in our case, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, but also our 
compadres in high-tech Boston and Seattle environs).

Larger properties lend themselves to this sort of arrangement.  The 
cross-generational element is mutually beneficial, especially to seniors for 
whom health risks and depression are aggravated by isolated living (both US and 
worldwide):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22994616

Millennials (born 1980 - 2000) are the largest age demographic today in the US, 
far larger than the GenXers behinds them (1960 - 1980) and the slowly vanishing 
post-WWII Boomers behind them.  The fastest growing age demographic are the 
oldsters (75+, in the last third of life) who also hold the greatest fraction 
of wealth in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_age#Demographic_changes

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/

Thus there is an attractive collaboration between Millennials and Oldsters 
(particularly War Babies and the Silent Generation born 1925 - 1945) —  
metaphorically, grandchildren living with grandparents, one contributing 
current income and the other capital housing assets.

There is a natural tension between parents and children (establishing 
independence) but a natural comfort between grandparents and children (“sharing 
a common enemy”) that helps three-generation living arrangements work well. As 
we consider co-housing (or any of the many euphemisms and variation for 
cooperative/collaborative residential situations), we should ponder whether the 
late 20th Century concept of separate family home in suburbia is still 
relevant, even if arranged in a cooperative “village”, when Millennial 
household formation is occurring less and less, probably driven by economics 
but also by a psychosocial shift from the Me-thinking of the Boomer generation 
to the We-thinking of Millennials.

=== Bill (thoughts over morning coffee)

William New
StillCreek Commons
94062-0951