Yes In My Spare Room: Increasing Housing Density Can Start With Us
A guest piece
Today’s piece is a guest article by writer and Substacker Andrew Berg, who writes over at The Dreamer & The Realist. He writes largely about religion and Christianity, not about urbanism, but that’s a good thing: this piece is a great example of urbanism as “things regular people can do” versus “things experts/policy wonks think people should do.”
Pay particular attention to Berg’s point that he himself would never have imagined he’d end up doing what he details in the piece. That phenomenon of surprising ourselves by changing our preferences should make us open-minded, curious, and humble. Enjoy the piece!
In 2016, my wife and I bought a house in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Built in 1900, our detached, narrow row-home featured three bedrooms and two bathrooms: too much space for just the two of us. We were able to host friends, relatives, and larger gatherings with ease. We decided to rent out our spare room on Airbnb on the weekends, picking up some extra cash with guests coming in for the town’s famous car shows or events at nearby Dickinson College.
In 2020, we shut down our Airbnb listing in the wake of COVID and my wife’s first pregnancy. Later that summer, an old college roommate reached out to my wife: she had been working internationally, but was stuck in the U.S. due to COVID travel restrictions. Could she live with us for six months? We agreed, and she joined us as a housemate. She shared in the cooking, cleaning, and (eventually) baby-holding, while we enjoyed quality time with our friend. For six months she stayed with us. It was such a positive experience that when our brother and sister-in-law asked to stay for three months with their dog and infant, we said yes again: the opportunity to share in the workload of managing the house and a newborn was worth the small inconveniences of living with others.
These were not the last housemates to stay with us; they were followed by a younger work colleague who lived with us for eight months, a college student who stayed for two months, and a couple of shorter-term friends and family members. For a couple of them, we charged a small rent fee, but mostly provided our spare room for free. Through each housemate, what initially seemed like an invasive prospect (another adult sharing our house, 24/7?) proved to be overall a very positive experience. Besides the efficiencies that come from sharing the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, utilities bills, and childcare, there were numerous intangible benefits: an extra person to vent to after a long day, spontaneous game and movie nights, watching our cat while we were traveling.
These experiences remind me a lot of the arguments that Addison Del Mastro has been raising in favor of YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) in general, and urbanism specifically: that Americans would have much to gain from an increased density of housing and population. But of course, as YIMBYs like Del Mastro, Matthew Yglesias, Jerusalem Demsas, and others routinely point out, there are countless barriers to making urbanism happen. Whether zoning regulations, construction costs, frivolous lawsuits, cultural inertia, and opposition from NIMBYs (“Not In My Backyard”), adding more housing in any given area is rarely a simple matter. Many housing advocates now realize that it will be a long while before substantial amounts of housing are brought to the market.
So in the meantime, in addition to YIMBY, I’d like to propose: Yes In My Spare Room (YIMSR - pronounced “Yim-Sir”). What if more homeowners considered opening their spare rooms to long-term housemates—whether friends, family, colleagues, or even strangers?
Now let me be honest. I’m an unlikely spokesperson for YIMSR. If you had asked me to consider inviting in long-term houseguests before COVID, I would have said no. A few days?—yeah sure! But a month or more? No way. Like many middle-class home-owning Americans, I value my privacy and my personal space, and the idea of inviting people who aren’t in my nuclear family to live with me for more than a few nights seemed strange and risky. It seemed like something only people living in a hippie commune or intentional Christian community (like the Bruderhof) would enjoy. As much as I love the idea of intentional community, I found the idea of sharing a home with another a bit strange.
Strange, that is, until I tried it out—and really enjoyed it! Now my wife and I miss having housemates. We have two kids now, each in their own room, meaning all three bedrooms are full, and our supply of housemates has halted. We’re considering making the kids share a room to reclaim a guest room—a practice which used to be very normal in America (especially when families had more children), but which has become quite rare as square footage has expanded even as family sizes have shrunk. We also recently had our attic renovated to add another possible living space (albeit for someone who doesn’t mind low ceilings).
And just to state what might be obvious, sharing living space with people who aren’t your spouse or child is, historically and globally speaking, very normal. For most of human history, one could expect parents, in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins, or other extended family members to live with you at some point or another. Hospitality was also a key value; it was common for any out-of-town guest who showed up at your door to be welcomed in with a meal and spare bed left ready for that purpose. In more recent history, many middle- and upper-class households hosted live-in servants, nannies, cooks, and other service workers. Even in the United States in 2024, sharing a home with other families is a practice that is still common among recent immigrant households, to the point that JD Vance recently complained about it.
So again, my proposal is: what if every American household thoughtfully considered if and how they might be able to host someone in their home long-term?
If you start doing the math, YIMSR could substantially help supplement our existing housing stock. Consider all the houses that have spare rooms available, especially in the suburbs. These homes might even be filled with well-meaning YIMBYs who want to help alleviate housing shortages, but aren’t sure how. YIMSR could give these homeowners an immediate way to assist. There are 127 million households in the United States (a figure that doesn’t include vacation homes). Of course, some of these households are in tiny rental apartments or other situations that would make YIMSR impractical. That said, if just 5 percent of these households began offering longer term spare rooms to friends, family, extended family members, or even trustworthy acquaintances, that would release the equivalent of 6.35 million units of housing stock into the market. This wouldn’t be enough to bring down prices in high-demand areas, but it might take the edge off rising costs. The beauty of YIMSR is that unlike new housing, it can be implemented nearly immediately by interested households, and if life circumstances change, they can roll it back.
Obviously, YIMSR has numerous barriers and potential objections. Safety would be a key concern. That’s why to start, I would suggest people invite friends, family, or acquaintances who are looking for housing to consider their spare bedroom. Most of us have a friend or family member who is a “digital nomad” that will happily live anywhere that has a Wi-Fi connection. For some households, there may even be an existing in-law suite that would allow for privacy and safety while granting someone (besides your in-laws) the ability to live next door.
This need not be solely an individual practice. Municipal governments could encourage YIMSR by offering free courses or resources on how to write leases for tenants, how to track income and expenses for tax purposes, or other nuts-and-bolts concerns. Construction companies could advertise simple ways to convert spare rooms into in-law apartments. In some communities there may be HOA regulations that would need to be revised to allow for long-term, easygoing guests to stay in spare rooms.
My guess is, however, that the main barriers to YIMSR are neither legal nor logistical, but cultural. Americans are so attached to our privacy that the idea that there might be someone else in our house feels strange. But like Del Mastro often points out about living in cities, there are immense benefits to being around other people, not least the fact that Americans need options to fight our loneliness epidemic. If YIMSR could combat that, while also pushing some additional housing into the market, then it feels worth trying.
As with any solution to a complex, multifaceted problem, YIMSR isn’t without its own costs; sometimes your housemate won’t wash the dishes. Sometimes inviting your cousin to live with you isn’t as fun as it might have sounded when you were a child. Sometimes the Wi-Fi can’t handle three adults on separate Zoom calls. But a few painful experiences doesn’t detract from the truth that for many American homeowners, YIMSR could be a boon to their overall wellbeing. And for those who do stay in these spare rooms, it provides an affordable respite from the rat race of chasing the next apartment, with costs ever-increasing.
Sharing a living space can be stressful, but with proper communication, clear boundaries, and a spirit of flexibility, it becomes eminently doable.
YIMBY, meet YIMSR!
Related Reading:
Thinking Bigger About the Housing Crisis
Apartments, Ownership, and Responsibility
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I'll just add that, to the potential roommates, you have a lot to gain as well! I rented a spare room from an older lady during a summer internship. Her screening criteria was simple - you had to go to church every Sunday. Once a week I'd go downstairs to do laundry (she lived in the basement), and we'd sit around her dining room table talking for hours until the dryer stopped, and sometimes longer. Those conversations are the only thing I remember from that summer.
My experiences on the host end have been more challenging, mostly because of East/West cultural differences that inevitably come to the surface. My in-laws typically stay with us for months at a time, and were raised in a culture in which extended families live together and have an assembly of family roles based on gender. As a result, I have to (mostly) assert and (occasionally) compromise my roles as a co-parent and co-homemaker with my mother-in-law. This isn't an insurmountable problem; it's more just to say that you learn a lot about yourself and what you believe when you invite people into your home for a long period of time. That's mostly a good thing.
The trends toward larger home sizes and smaller household sizes mean that there is much more housing space available if people would be willing to follow this path. As the author points out, it would also free up additional housing options as people leave their current homes to move into shared housing. Another plus: existing utility infrastructure can more easily accommodate shared housing than new construction. My state has mandated that cities develop housing production strategies to meet targeted goals for needed new housing, but incentivizing and reducing barriers to the YIMSR strategy is probably not something that would occur to many jurisdictions, even though the net gains could be considerable and the costs minimal. I appreciate the idea of local guidance on construction/conversion. This could become a niche market, especially in areas where permitting and development fees are streamlined to encourage this approach. Thank you for sharing this essay.