Make Your House a Home: The Top 7 Benefits of Family Housing

These days it gets harder and harder to spend quality family time together. Our children go to college, get married, and have families and careers of their own.

Sometimes it seems like we never get to spend the time we used to with the people we love most. Many families live miles away from each other. A visit can end up ending in a long commute.

What if we could change this? What if there was a way we could spend more time together? Well, there is, with family housing. But what is family housing? With family housing, your family lives on your property in a separate dwelling.

Our families can conduct independent lives all their own while remaining close in proximity. The benefits of family housing go beyond spending time together.

They offer other advantages as well. In this post, you’ll discover seven benefits of family housing. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Keep Your Family Safe

As our parents age, they develop health issues. It’s often difficult to manage life on their own. Our parents become more forgetful, may no longer be able to drive due to failing eyesight, and they need assistance.

Family housing, think of it as a granny flat or a mother-in-law dwelling that allows you to stay close to your aging relative to keep them safe.

Here’s how you can help keep your elderly relative safe:

• Help them manage their medications
• Take them to medical appointments
• Help them do the shopping
• Help them with their bills
• Run errands
• Remember important dates and appointments
• Socialize with them, so they don’t spend too much time alone

If anything goes wrong, say they have a bad fall, you’re close by to tend to their needs. The best part of family housing? Your elderly parent will get to spend time with your children building memories while their aging relative is still alive.

2. Family Housing Is Affordable

Family housing provides a much more affordable living option than most. For example, if your elderly relative lives in an independent assisted living facility, it’s much more expensive.

In 2018, an assisted living facility was reported to cost around $4,000 a month. ($6,000+ in cities like San Jose or Palo Alto, California) And it’s gone up in price since then.

Does your son or daughter rent or pay an expensive mortgage? The rent and mortgage payments are not cheap. Building a house on your property will allow your family member to save money without having to pay a high mortgage and taxes.

They’ll be able to invite their friends over, throw dinner parties, or host a football game party if they wish without disturbing anyone in the main house. You’ll help them save money by not throwing it away.

3. Helps College-Age Adults Build Independence

College-age adults have lived at home their entire lives. Many are eager to get out and live their own lives as independent adults.

Whether they attend college, work a part-time, or full-time job, there’s a time for them to leave the nest and try to make it on their own.

Living in family housing makes a good transition in helping them to learn how to manage their bills. They’ll learn how to take financial responsibility, responsibility for keeping a clean home and cooking for themselves.

From time to time, of course, they’ll have dinner with you. They may bring over a load of laundry if you let them. But they’ll also learn independent living skills on their own.

4. Helps New Mothers With Childcare

There’s nothing more exciting to a mother and father than seeing their daughter give birth to a child of her own. Or their son becomes a proud father.

It’s the perfect opportunity for you to spoil your grandchildren in a way you couldn’t do with your children. Living on the same lot will help your daughter, who is now a new mother have some downtime.

It’s the perfect opportunity for her to do some self-care of her own. When she needs a break, you can relieve her while spending precious time with your grandchild, so she can enjoy some “me time” of her own.

5. Develop Relationships With Your Niece and Nephew

Do you have a favorite niece or nephew? Many of us do. Don’t worry, we won’t tell! When your favorite nephew or niece lives close by, it’s a wonderful opportunity to spend quality family time with them and strengthen your relationship.

Families are more than the nuclear family. They’re extended family, too. When they get older, you can do more adult things together.

Examples include going shopping, preparing meals together, looking at old family photo albums that aren’t digital, and on Facebook. They’re the paper kind!

6. You’ll Never Be Alone

If you live in a house alone and lost your significant other at any age, having a family member living nearby means you’ll have someone to talk to, someone to be there. We can get involved in our activities and forget to do social activities together. This makes it easier.

During our recent shelter-in-place rule throughout California, we’ve all felt a little isolated. We’ve stayed inside for hours on end, seperated from family, friends..

Many of us work remotely and haven’t been able to socialize with co-workers. Having a family member who lives on the property means you’ll never be alone for very long.

7. Have Close Friends Nearby

For some of us, our friends become family members. Remember the show Sex in the City? The girls were like family to each other. Whatever happened in life, they promised to stay together.

If we’ve been through a divorce and our children live far away due to their career opportunities, having a friend in family housing feels just like family.

We can go shopping together, have brunch al fresco in town, make meals together, take an exercise class, or play cards at the kitchen table. The only thing to decide: who will be hosting the day’s or evening’s activities. Netflix on the couch, anyone?

Keep Families Together With Family Housing

Family housing keeps you together with family and (friends who are family). It’s an affordable housing option and gives you plenty of unique opportunities to socialize, keep each other safe, help each other out, and have meaningful fun.

Interested in learning more about family housing? Contact us today and keep the people you love close to home.