More people are moving back to shared housing like roommate setups, reversing decades of wanting separate bedrooms and bathrooms. New apps now match compatible roommates, and the trend echoes older models like boarding houses and teacherages where shared living was normal.
Now, if you're wondering what that is, because you're a young person who hasn't watched it in reruns— actually, young people are more likely to have watched it because they all love Betty White. You had 4 women living together in one house as a way to reduce cost and also to be sociable. Well, that's what they're talking about here, is the new marketplaces that are coming up for people to apply and get matched with somebody as a potential roommate. I think this is an interesting conversation because if you look at the history of this country, we did often have teachers that would live in teacherages or in boarding positions where they didn't have a lot of revenue. They might rent a room from somebody. It was a normal part of society for a long time. We've just gotten away from that in our world that says we need our own bedroom, our own bathroom. Everybody in the house needs their own bedroom, their own bathroom. We need 5,000— you don't need 5,000 square feet sometimes. So you realize that this is actually harkening back to the way things used to operate, which kept us in a pretty good place for a community.
