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While thousands of unattached people are moving in together, another alternative for the hordes of young people born in the middle of the postwar baby boom is going back home to live with the folks. Although this can cause some problems, it is often a comfortable solution. "I have a very cushy life-style," confides Sandy Edens, 26, who commutes from her father's house in Grosse Point, Mich., to the Center for Creative Studies, a private Detroit art college, where she is assistant dean of students. Adds she: "A maid comes and cleans and does the cooking, and I can use all the money I'd pay for rent on clothes and vacations." Edens, who contributes to the cost of food, utilities and the maid's salary, concedes that there are drawbacks to the arrangement. "If a gentleman friend wanted to stay the night, he'd have to use the guest room." In Troy, Mich., Sheet Metal Executive Harold Rochon, 44, last August invited daughter Dee Anne and her new husband Steve to move to a cottage attached to the side of their split-level ranch house after the newlyweds began experiencing financial difficulties. Says he: "We like the kids, and that's all that counts.
We hope they can put some money aside for the day they want to move out."
Lending officers around the U.S. report a big jump in home improvement loans, which are often used to pay for construction of extra living quarters in existing housing.
"It's a fair surmise that much of this expansion is being done to accommodate children who live at home," says Norwick R. Goodspeed, chairman of the Peoples Savings Bank of Bridgeport, Conn., which has seen a 50% increase in home improvement loans since 1979.
In Braintree, Mass., Builder Gordon Poulos recalls that on one local street he recently encountered three different homeowners who were sprucing up their cellars to house family members. Says he: "It used to be that people finished the attic of a Cape Cod home. Now they're fixing up the cellars, hooking up fluorescent lights, making real underground apartments."
The renting of rooms in single-family homes is also rising, even in areas where multiple occupancy of single-family housing violates local zoning laws. In one recent survey of 200 bedroom communities surrounding New York City, 71% reported that illegal rentals were beginning to surge. Says Richard Spirio, planning commissioner in the town of Babylon, N.Y. (pop. 153,000): "People have been hiding their heads in the sand about illegal, multifamily conversions. In Babylon, we discovered that roughly 5,000 homes out of 38,000 had already been converted."
Babylon officials have been willing to approve such conversions, although urban planners have long regarded them as a cause of overcrowding and city decay. The new arrangements make it possible for older couples to remain in their homes, while permitting the community to keep its younger members, most of whom are unable to afford local home prices.
High costs for traditional housing have proved a boon for manufacturers of mobile homes, whose sales for the first eight months of 1981 rose 17%, to an annual rate of 280,000 units. Price is the big selling point. Last year, a mobile home cost an average of about $18,500, compared with $64,500 for site-built houses.