What's cost effective about taking in people with NO INCOMES?
You're still paying the entire mortgage, the heating bill but the hot water and electric will go up with more people using them as will the food bills, with the extra person contributing nothing.
Remember we were talking about people who have supposedly given up on looking for work and no longer collecting unemployment?
I wouldn't be surprised if that figure is accurate, whether it's moving back with mom'n dad or taking extra roommates.
8.2 million people? Right.
Maybe I'll give up working or even looking for a job and just take in "extra" roomates to pay my bills for me. LOL
Why is it cost effective? Here's why. In many cities it's $50,000 a year for marginally decent nursing home care.
Many elderly people don't need the full service of a nursing home - they need "assisted living" to help them stay in their homes. "Assisted living" means help with shopping, cleaning, and minor "medical" tasks like administering medicine, checking monitors, etc.
When old people get older and more frail and/or delusional, they may need round-the-clock care. They may need more medical services, like checking IV lines or catheters. Paying for all these services can get phenomenally expensive - one *hour* of a visiting RN's time can cost $100.
For elderly people who don't want to spend themselves down into Medicaid, and who want to remain in their own homes, having a middle-aged child move in with them to provide their "assisted living" or even some medical care *is* very cost-effective, when you consider how expensive the alternative is becoming.
As the numbers of elderly increase rapidly every year, don't expect these costs to go down anytime soon, either.
Yes, I'm sure it sounds funny, but that's exactly what widows used to do in the 19th and even early 20th century, until zoning laws and general litigiousness forced them out. They used to run boarding houses. Everyone benefited: single working people found a cheap room to live in while they saved money, and the widow earned badly-needed cash.
One reason this economy *has* hurt the middle class so sharply is because many of these options of former days (taking in boarders, offering private lessons out of one's home, raising rabbits in the back yard) have been legislated / zoned out of the realm of possibility.