For 25-year-old Ben Hoffinger, moving back in with his parents was an easy decision. 

After a year working abroad in Spain, Hoffinger returned to his parents' home in the Boston area in 2023 to start graduate school at Harvard. He said it was the right choice while he faced long hours in school and a pricy Ivy League tuition – especially with apartments in the area costing more than $3,000 per month on average. 

“In terms of just doing 20-year-old people things, it’s sometimes a little tougher with your parents. I can’t casually waltz in at 4 a.m. and start blasting music,” Hoffinger said. But there are "benefits of living with roommates who have their act figured out. ... They’ll take care of the essentials, and I can worry less about them.” 

Hoffinger is among the growing number of Americans in multigenerational housing. While young adults moving in with parents drive the trend, Pew Research has also tracked an uptick among older age groups, with some households going so far as to build out space for their extended family.  

It’s a departure from the nuclear family structure that has become standard practice in America, but multigenerational living advocates say there’s reason to celebrate a trend that offers both emotional and financial perks.  

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“It’s not for everybody,” said Donna Butts, executive director of the nonprofit multigenerational housing advocacy group Generations United. But “it does really work for a number of families.” 

Why is multigenerational living on the rise? 

Homes with at least two generations of adults over 24 or grandparents with younger grandchildren quadrupled between 1971 to 2021 to nearly 60 million homes, according to Pew Research.

One of the main drivers behind more young adults living with their parents? Housing prices, according to research from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

A 2023 paper found nearly half of adults aged 18 to 29 live with their parents, up from about 25% in 1960 and at levels not seen since the Great Depression era. Meanwhile, median housing prices in the country jumped from less than $18,000 in 1963, the present-day equivalent of roughly $186,000,to over $400,000 today, per U.S. Census Bureau data.  

“It's a response to the challenging economics of the housing markets today,” said Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate at Wharton who co-authored the paper. “There are more boomerang children 25 and older than ever before coming back to live with parents, and also never leaving.”  

It’s a trend criticized by many Americans. Pew in 2022 reported that over a third of Americans say more young adults living with their parents is “bad for society.”  Another survey from marketing consultancy firm Edelman found that while 42% of parents provided financial support to adult children in 2024, 78% believed children should live on their own by age 25. 

But multigenerational living trends are fueled by more than just young adults.

The U.S. Census Bureau has tracked a rise in three or more generations under one roof. Six million of these multigenerational homes accounted for 4.7% of households in 2020, up from 3.7% of households in 2000. Pew has also tracked a rise in multigenerational homes among all age groups since the 1970s.

An increasingly diverse U.S. population has played into the trend, according to Pew. Asian, Hispanic and Black populations are more likely than white populations to live with extended family, especially if they are immigrants; as these populations grew, so too did multigenerational living trends.  

More Americans have also turned to multigenerational living due to financial issues (40% of respondents) or caregiving purposes (33% of respondents), according to polling from Pew. 

“We started saying that was the American dream, to own your own home, to be independent,” Butts said. “But people are interdependent. There are times where we need to lean on each other.”   

'The best of both worlds'

Multigenerational trends have kept Philadelpha-based home contractor Kevin Kennedy busy. 

There’s been growing interest in accessory dwelling units, also called ADUs or “granny flats” ‒ small homes built on the same lot as single-family units. A report from Freddie Mac found the number of first-time ADU listings averaged 8.6% in year-over-year growth between 2009 and 2019. More than one-third of people surveyed by the housing finance company in 2022 said they would consider adding an ADU to house family, either temporarily or permanently. 

Kennedy said projects converting properties for multigenerational families “took off like a rocket ship” after the pandemic hit. 

“From 1999 to 2018, we were doing one every couple of years. Now, it’s probably 65% to 75% of my business,” he said. 

Kennedy said he suspects more families have wanted to keep a close eye on relatives in the aftermath of the pandemic. That’s why his family made the shift, he said, converting their home to give his in-laws a two-bedroom space with a separate entrance.  

The addition has been "the best of both worlds," he said. There’s enough separation in the home to allow privacy, but the grandparents' proximity has strengthened the family’s bonds, with the household gathering three to four nights a week to enjoy a meal from his mother-in-law, a retired chef. 

"We got to grow better as a family together,” Kennedy said.

While financial issues often force families under one roof, a Generations United survey suggests families often discover the structure works well for them, with more than 70% of surveyed Americans living in multigenerational housing planning to continue living together long-term.

“While the families came together by need, they stayed together by choice. They found that it worked for various reasons and was successful for their families,” Butts said. “There were benefits to that kind of living arrangement.” 

There are also challenges. The Generations United report notes that 75% of those living in a multigenerational home say it can cause stress among the family, but 76% also say the arrangement has also had a positive impact on their mental or physical health. 

Marc Freedman, co-CEO ofCoGenerate, an organization focused on bridging generational divides, touts multigenerational living as a way to form connections across generational lines and combat the country’s loneliness and social isolation epidemic.  

“I think we discovered that the unsupported nuclear family is oftentimes a very stressful way of living,” Freedman said.  

Perks for older Americans

Americans 65 and older were once the most likely of any age group to live in multigenerational households, with more than half doing so in 1900, according to Pew.

But after programs like Social Security and Medicare were introduced and older adults grew healthier and wealthier, more opted to live on their own. By 1971, the share of older Americans living in multigenerational households had plummeted to 9%. 

Trends have reversed course since then, with 18% of Americans 65 and older living in multigenerational homes as of 2021.

Part of this could be from a lack of affordable alternatives; 13% of Americans over 75 could afford a median-priced nursing home, and 14% could afford daily home health visits, according to a 2023 study from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

"The baby boomers, as a percentage of Americans have just been growing dramatically," said John Graham, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine's business school and co-author of “Under One Roof: Creating Harmony for Multigenerational Living.” "When the government systems can't manage things, families help one another."

Other older Americans are looking outside their family trees.

Phyllis Segal, 79 of Massachusetts, has been renting out the accessory building on her property for the past three years to younger adults for about $600 a month, well below the average rent in her area. A widow, Segal said she believes home sharing addresses a number of issues, including high costs of living and social isolation.  

The arrangement has been “fabulous" for her. She said there are perks to having a younger person on the property who can help with some of the more physical chores around the house, but she also cherishes the relationships she develops with her younger tenants. 

“I have immensely enjoyed getting to know them and learning from them, and hopefully helping them to understand the experience of an older generation. It’s been a very rich part of this for me,” said Segal, a senior fellow at CoGenerate. “I think if you were to ask them, they’d say the same.” 

Across the country in Los Angeles, Sarah Livschitz, 32, has been living with Laura Geller, 75, since 2023.  

Originally from New Zealand, Livschitz found herself looking for a place to stay in Los Angeles while enrolled at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion. Friends suggested moving in with Geller; one of the first women ordained by the college, Geller had been offering her four-bedroom home to students since 2020.

Livschitz said the home and garden were stunning, but the main draw for her was living with Geller.

“It's been really interesting to get to know someone of a different generation as a friend, but also as a mentor and flatmate,” she said. “She’s a fascinating person. And being new to the area, it was really helpful to have an anchor point.” 

The two have bonded over shared interests, like hosting dinner parties, and talk over recent news at the breakfast table. Livschitz makes the two fresh juice from oranges picked in Geller's garden, and Geller frets over Livschitz’s safety when she’s biking at night. 

“We share the space and grow together,” Livschitz said.

Geller said sharing her home with a younger generation has brought life to her house.

“It's so interesting for me to be part of life that I would not have had access to,” she said. “One of the difficulties of intergenerational living is very often, the older people like me feel like we have wisdom that we want to pass down to the next generation. But the truth about cogeneration is it’s a two-way street.”