The Graying Of America and Multi-Family Housing

We would like to share with you an interesting trend in American lifestyle associated with the “graying of America”.  It is the trend of extended families investing in multi-family housing designs to “keep the family” close.

First, what is "Multi-family Housing?"  Multi-family housing is a type of residential structure with more than one dwelling unit in the same building. For the sake of this blog post, think of multi-family housing as “town homes”, homes of any style that share common walls.  You can view a number of examples on the Avalon Building System multi-family home plans product page.

The growing trend is for American families to “circle the wagons” to both care for aging parents and to combat the poor U.S. economy.  The trend is for extended families to liquidate their individual properties and pool the equities into multi-family projects to both cut housing cost and to co-locate the family to pool human resource to care for a special-need family member (ie aging parents). 

The traditional method to keep “Mom and Dad” out of assisted living centers is to build additions or “in-law suites” onto existing property.  However, building restrictions, land availability, and land cost make this increasingly cost prohibitive.  Americans are finding they can consolidate and co-locate entire extended families by owning and occupying multi-family housing units.

You won’t see this on the front page news, but it is something to celebrate in American culture.  Americans still love and sacrifice for our elders who loved and sacrificed for us.  An alternative solution (if common walls is not right for you) might be to co-locate two or more ranch modular homes on a double-lot of your choosing.  

When and if this idea of co-location becomes a topic within your extended family, we hope you will consider any of the fully customizable Avalon Building Systems custom modular homes as your building solution.