Would the Housing Crisis Ease if Boomers Rented Out Their Empty Rooms?

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Economy|Would the Housing Crisis Ease if Boomers Rented Out Their Empty Rooms?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/business/economy/housing-crisis-multifamily-adu.html

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Millions of single-family homes are underused, on spacious lots. Refitting them for “roommate houses” or backyard cottages could make a difference.

Monte Anderson sits with his hands folded on a table in front of a window. A cat lies next to his hands.

May 4, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

Monte Anderson opened a broom closet in his kitchen and pointed to a door handle near a mop and a trash can. Somewhere on the other side lay one small solution to America’s affordable housing crisis.

Mr. Anderson is a developer who rehabs commercial and residential buildings in and around Dallas, including the ranch-style house where he lives, for now, with three kind-of-sort-of roommates. The 2,400-square-foot home has been split into four studio apartments. Each has an outdoor entrance, but also connects to another unit through a door like the one in his kitchen closet.

The connecting doors are locked and hidden because they’re designed to not be used. The main reason for their existence is that they allow Mr. Anderson to claim he lives in a single-family home, in accordance with local zoning codes, when in reality the home contains four apartments in a country that needs more of them.

“This is a suburban retrofit,” Mr. Anderson, 66, said during the tour.

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Mr. Anderson spent about $1 million renovating the house, which was almost uninhabitable when he bought it. Credit...Desiree Rios for The New York Times

Economists estimate that America needs between four million and eight million more homes. Their prescription is to build a lot of new houses and apartment complexes. It’s a remedy that politicians from both parties agree with in principle, but that is bound to take decades to accomplish.

It takes money to buy land, time to secure permits. In the meantime, construction costs have exploded. That’s why most new homes tend to be luxury rentals or higher-cost houses, rather than something a person with a middle or lower income can afford. Those lower-cost units, however, are the ones in the shortest supply.