Remember when states were encouraging, even compensating, homeowners to build ADUs to help ease the affordable housing crisis in many areas and rent those units in their properties with little oversight requirements to encourage as many as possible to build them? There’s a newer trend and some are utilizing those differently now.

Multi-generational housing is on the rise. Properties with casitas, pool houses, ADUs, guest houses, backyard cottages, etc were all once considered a luxury and feature of the rich. Not anymore. Now they’re not just in law suites or apartment income to rent out; they’re permanent rooms of entire families moving onto the same property full time. They’re not for when they visit. Extended families are buying and moving in with each other to afford housing and share living expenses so they can live off shrinking incomes as costs soar ever since Covid now almost five years ago.

Some homes are now being built brand new by developers as these homes to be intended for families to buy with their grandparents, aunts and uncles, or even older siblings. There are all kinds of dynamics in play but basically, they’re moving in with other family members living next door in the same land or attached at the studs; literally. Garage conversions and ADUs are now being done for families to move in their aging relatives home or others in their family who can’t afford to live elsewhere because rents are so high and buying a home is not a possibility on their own.

Many of my relatives and myself own large plots of land. If we ever had to build a small house or cottage on it for family to live that’d be mult-generational housing. We even considered it for our aging mothers since we have acres to share and they’d be close to us in case something happened. Would you consider this to buy a home and/or help your family?