When I was researching my book How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century, I asked many people how they would like to live if they could choose any way at all. One popular fantasy was the Golden Girls model – a group of people would all live together under the same roof. They could include friends and not just relatives, and they would each have their own private bedroom. They would also share certain spaces such as a living room and kitchen, creating a feeling of companionship and camaraderie.
Other people prefer living alone but can’t afford it. Living with roommates is sometimes their only reasonable option.
Too bad for all of those people if they live in Shawnee, Kansas. The city council recently voted unanimously to ban “co-living” arrangements, which they define as four or more adults who are unrelated. It’s worse than it sounds; if just one person is unrelated to the others, the entire group is classified as unrelated, and therefore illegal. (Group homes for people with disabilities would not be banned.)
In the typical arrangement that the Kansans do not like, each bedroom is rented separately, and the roommates share common spaces. One of the women in the community who was in favor of the ban said she was worried about property values and about “this juxtaposition of people who care about their homes and those who don’t.” Another community member, a renter, objected to the consistent derogation of people like her during the months when the law was being debated; “My home is not an eyesore and I am not a liability,” she said.
The new policy was instantly derided and mocked on social media. A tweet posted on April 28 showed a screenshot of a newspaper article titled “Shawnee unanimously passes ordinance banning co-living.” In less than a week, it was retweeted or quote tweeted nearly 20,000 times and liked nearly 73,000 times. In the Kansas City Star, an editorial (behind a paywall) ran under the headline, “Shawnee, Kansas co-living rentals ban criminalizes poverty.”
The policy doesn’t just criminalize poverty, it also criminalizes kindness. If three people who were related to each other wanted to take in a friend who had just lost a job and might otherwise be homeless until they found their next employment, I think that might be prohibited. Same for people who might want to open the home that they rented to a refugee.
As cruel as the Kansas policy might seem, it is hardly unique. Other places around the country also have zoning laws designed to discourage roommates, and sometimes the number of unrelated adults they prohibit is smaller than four. For example, in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court upheld an ordinance that capped the number of unrelated people who could live together at three. An article about it said that the city that originally passed the ordinance did not want “students piling up in single-family residences within city limits.”
Discussions of these kinds of policies often devolve into distinctions between the supposedly “good” kinds of people who might want to live together and the “bad” ones. In South Carolina, for example, the attorney defending the ban said that there would be exceptions, such as for young professionals living together.
In 2016, I wrote about this issue when a very close group of 8 adults and 3 children (the Scarborough 11), who considered themselves an “intentional family,” moved into a big house in Hartford, Connecticut that they had renovated. That attracted the ire of some of their neighbors, and the fuss the neighbors made attracted national attention. I did a deep dive into this issue, interviewing many experts and activists and thought leaders. I’m sharing the entire article below. Happily, I can add this update: After a two-year battle, the Scarborough 11 prevailed. The city backed off.
Beyond the Nuclear Family: New Policies and Practices Are Needed for the Way We Live Now
March 22, 2016
We are living in a time of unprecedented possibilities for how to live. Nuclear family households may still be sentimental favorites in popular culture, but in real life, they are in the distinct minority. Fewer than 20 percent of all households in the U.S. are comprised solely of nuclear families.
Instead, we have a proliferation of innovative alternatives, as I discovered when researching How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century. I should have kept count of the number of people who said that when they get older, they want to find a big house to share with their friends. It is not just fantasy. More and more people are living in these Golden Girls type homes, and they are not all seniors or young adults just starting out. Others are living in places of their own within intentional communities, such as cohousing communities. Multigenerational households have also continued to increase in numbers, even after the recent recession ended.
Our policies and practices, though, have not caught up with our actual lives. If the sweet foursome of Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia were to move into a nice part of town today, their neighbors just might take them to court to try to get rid of them. Even if they did not get tossed out on a zoning technicality, they might not be able to find a place they could afford, or they might not be able to find a place that was suitable (all on one floor, designed for accessibility and other aging-in-place considerations), or the available places might be in inconvenient or undesirable locations.
For the past several weeks, I have been asking experts and activists and innovative thinkers to tell me what needs to change if people are going to be able to live with the people who matter most to them, in the kinds of homes and communities that suit them and allow them to live with dignity. As I will explain, they pointed to a range of legal issues and practical concerns. First, though, let’s consider a case that illustrates many of the most important points.
The Scarborough 11
The story of one particular non-nuclear family in Hartford, Connecticut has made national news and elicited an outpouring of support. Sometimes called the Scarborough 11, they are 8 adults who have been longtime friends, and three children. The two couples with children, one couple with no children, and two single people moved from a house that was too small for them into a 9-bedroom dilapidated mansion that had been empty for at least four years. Only two of the adults could be listed on the mortgage but their attorney, Peter Goselin, wrote a partnership agreement that named all of them as legal owners.
The adults renovated the house and brought it up to code, and settled in to the family life they so enjoyed. They share meals and household expenses, make decisions together, plan their lives together, care for each other, and love each other. When they described their feelings for one other, and the mutual support they provide in good times and bad, several members of a zoning board of appeals were moved to tears.
The family was appearing before the board because their very non-traditional household upset some of their neighbors, who feared that frat houses and boarding houses might be next. The area was zoned for single-family homes, and the neighbors believed that the 11 people living on Scarborough Street did not qualify as a single family.
Definitions of family are at the core of policies and regulations at all levels of government. Most of the definitions are too narrow to include all of the new and meaningful ways that people are creating family in the twenty-first century.
As Peter Goselin noted in an email exchange:
[Not all families] live at a single address, nor are there always “heads of households,” nor do households always hold only a single family, nor are these relationships we create that we call families always made up of people to whom we are related by blood, marriage, or adoption.
The definition of family in the Hartford zoning regulations allowed for two or more people “living together and interrelated by consanguinity, marriage, civil union, or legal adoption.” But if the residents are unrelated, only two adults were allowed – unless they were domestic servants. Households could have any number of those.
Goselin added:
In the Scarborough 11 case, my clients are struggling with a narrow definition of family that literally forbids many real, intentionally chosen families from living in their neighborhood. Ironically, the law permits my clients to enter into a partnership to own their house together, but bars them from living in it.
BARRIERS TO LIVING IN THE FAMILIES AND HOUSEHOLDS WE CHOOSE
#1 The Narrow Definition of Family
Restrictive definitions of family stand in the way of basic benefits and protections for those who are not married. For example, they limit family and medical leave, sometimes making it impossible for unmarried Americans to be there for the ones they love, or for those people to be there for them. Bereavement leave is curtailed, too.
As the Scarborough 11 case shows, narrow definitions also place unfair restrictions on the places people can live. Mia Birdsong, family activist and co-director (with Nicole Rodgers) of Family Story, said that these definitions can also restrict access to homeownership, as when eligibility for certain first-time homebuyer programs is limited to single families. Extended families and groups of friends are left out, even if they meet the income requirements.
In an article on the significance of the definition of family to access to subsidized housing, attorney Madeline Howard described many ways that restrictive definitions are especially harmful to people with low incomes. For example:
- Low-income families may need to share a place with other families out of financial necessity, but then it becomes hard for them to find a place to live, because their shared households are disallowed by many zoning regulations
- Low-income families may be especially likely to have fluid families, with people entering and leaving the household as their circumstances change
- “HUD rules allow families to bring foster children into the home, but define foster children as a child in custody of a state or other public agency, thus excluding unofficial caretaking arrangement.” Various local rules “may limit the flexibility of struggling families who depend on unofficial foster parenting relationships.”
Even when unrelated individuals (such as groups of friends) are included in definitions of family, sometimes the number of such people who can qualify is severely limited. In the Hartford example, that number was just two.
#2 Current Legal Documents Are Inadequate, and New Ones Are Expensive to Create
The Scarborough 11 found that they could only include two of the adults on the mortgage. My House, Our House co-author Louise Machinist found the same thing. Like the Hartford family, she and her home-mates had to hire a lawyer to draw up the appropriate papers. It cost them thousands of dollars. What we need, she told me, are “state of the art co-owner agreements, or general partnership agreements, that are simple and easily adaptable to protect the rights of unmarried folks who live together, especially those who bought property together.”
#3 Affordability
Affordability is not just an issue for people who already qualify as low-income. As Cindy Butler, past Executive Director of Unmarried Equality, noted:
“I know too many women who have been unemployed or underemployed for long periods of time. They have had to use retirement funds to survive and will have to work until they die. The only way housing will be affordable is to share. We need more affordable options that provide co-housing opportunities.”
Sharing Housing author Annamarie Pluhar has a specific idea she would like to see implemented:
“I would love it if the tax code changed to allow seniors who share their own residence and earn income as part of the arrangement would not have to pay income tax on it.”
Economic challenges are likely to be especially severe for unmarried Americans, who are excluded from the many tax breaks and other lucrative benefits available only to those who are officially married. Cindy Butler underscored one of the most significant ones, Social Security:
“Many of us will end up being taken care of, or sharing in the care of, friends. Not spouses, not blood family members. If I have put funds into Social Security since I starting working at age 16, shouldn’t I be able to have those funds help support those I leave behind? Why does a marriage license provide that support? My money will go back to the system when I die, so I am essentially supporting married people and their children. We should be able to share our benefits with whomever we share our lives. A marriage license should not dictate who is worthy or not.”
#4 Location, Location, Location
Louise Machinist noted that housing that is suitable and affordable is sometimes located “way out in the boondocks,” where people may not want to live.
Louise wasn’t referring to subsidized housing, but Madeline Howard was. She argues that some of the inaccessibility is deliberate:
“In order to exclude all low-income families, wealthy communities may use zoning restrictions to exclude both shared family homes and affordable housing developments. As a result, subsidized housing developments are often located in remote and undesirable locations, and low-income families of color are segregated from wealthier, whiter communities.”
Issues of both affordability and accessibility are beginning to be addressed by programs requiring that particular tracts of land or a certain number of units of new developments be set aside for affordable housing. In Oakland, CA, for example, “A People’s Proposal” is advocating for “public land for the public good.” And in New York City, Mayor de Blasio is proposing “Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning.”
#5 The Design of Housing and Communities
When I asked people how the design of homes and communities will need to change to keep up with the ways people want to live now, there was one response I got over and over again: built more homes with more than one primary bedroom.
Moira Bowman, deputy director of Forward Together, pointed to the importance of multigenerational households to groups such as immigrants, Asians, and other families of color. Multiple primary bedrooms may be particularly attractive to households with multiple generations.
Annamarie Pluhar has her finger on the pulse of groups of people who want to live together as home-mates (sharing their lives, and not just the house). She thinks the seniors among them who are interested in living with friends want not just multiple primary suites, but homes that are single-story. Louise Machinist agrees, and adds that Boomers also want their homes outfitted with features that facilitate aging in place.
Author and marketing expert Lori Martinek would like to see “the return of the four-unit duplex, where four owners come together to jointly own and live ‘together but separately’ in one place.” She also sees the appeal of “smaller apartment or condo buildings that have shared amenities and a strong sense of community.”
I’ve been emphasizing various forms of shared housing, but many people live alone, and want to continue to do so for as long as they possibly can – even as they need more and more help. For those people (as well as others who do not live alone but still need help if they are to stay in their homes), my favorite development is the nationwide Village movement. Villages are locally-based membership organizations that provide seniors with easy access to resources and help such as rides and assistance with household chores. Many Villages also host social and cultural events. (I described Villages in more detail, with an emphasis on the one in Santa Barbara, in How We Live Now.) There are currently about 190 villages, with another 150 in the works.
THE BIG PICTURE
When I asked long-time Unmarried Equality member and former Board member Rajiv Garg for his suggestions, he said:
“Change the definition of family – a social unit consisting of one or more adults living together with or without the children they care for. Actually, better yet, remove it from any laws granting preferences based on family (except in the case of parent/child or guardian/ward).”
All of the people who have played important roles in UE (or its previous iterations) ended up offering the same big picture perspectives. Thomas Coleman, who has been working on issues of unmarried equality for decades, believes that when policies promise not to discriminate on the basis of characteristics such as race or religion, marital status should be included among those protected classes. Current UE Treasurer Gordon Morris said that we should “phase out marriage privileges in the tax code, in Social Security, and everywhere else.” In a Washington Post article, current Board Chair Sarah Wright argued for government getting out of the marriage business entirely. It may sound radical, but as Sarah and others have noted, it has quite a lot of support from across ideological and political spectrums.
[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) For links to previous columns, click here.]
About Bella DePaulo
