The Society is expanding existing and new relationships with older adults who are current clients, community members, key partners, and other interested individuals to organize and build a Multi-Generational Family Housing Coalition that uses a community directed approach.
The community directed approach will identify issues in current housing policies that discourage multi-generational families with a focus on extremely low and low income older adults, especially Black and Latinx older adults, LBGTQIA older adults, and urban and rural older adults.
The Coalition will review the policies and structural barriers that discourage multigenerational households including benefits, tax policy, housing, food insecurity, and other programs.
Multi-Generational households include adult children who continue to live with their parents, families who intentionally live together, grandparents raising grandchildren, and older adults who live with their adult children either for economic or the health reasons.
The project will do a systemic analysis of the barriers that families face when they choose to live together. Multi-Generational housing is one approach and an alternative to aging in place in one’s own home.
Multi-Generational families can
- Offer the comfort of one’s own space for privacy and independence by either having adult children live with an older adult or vice versa.
- Can meet the economic needs of many older adults who are unable to afford the cost of housing.
- Can support the transfer of wealth between generations as adult children are able to improve their financial position and savings for future needs.
- Can provide emotional and social support, as well as a family structure for relationships and interaction that is critical to well-being.
- Can help many older adults to avoid institutional placements and often save the cost of long term care, as family members may provide informal care.