Breaking with Tradition

摘要

The past 70 years have seen a dramatic change in living arrangements in the United States, from a preponderance of families with children in the postwar baby boom years to a much more diverse array of households, including significant shares of homes occupied by single persons, couples, and "nontraditional" families. Meanwhile, our housing stock has been slower to evolve. Housing can have a useful life of decades or more, and much of our current stock consists of detached single-family homes built in the second half of the 20th century. And though our households have grown smaller and more varied, we are still primarily building single-family homes- albeit larger versions-in part because we can afford them, and also because, whether from a failure to envision other options or deeply ingrained tastes, we favor them. Owning a single-family home, after all, has long been part of the American Dream. But it is also true that the legal, financial, and market systems in which we produce our housing were largely put in place during the postwar years, a period dominated by the nuclear family household. These frameworks are difficult to change, and the durability of housing means that the housing stock we have, and the stock we add each year, may be growing further away from what we actually need, now and in the future.