Cohabitation jumps. Renting out rooms becoming the new norm

More share space to shave costs in recession

Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, August 17, 2009

(08-16) 18:57 PDT -- Cathy Herlicy was getting desperate for a way to meet expenses after her hours as a limousine dispatcher were slashed and she couldn't find other work.
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"Everything bottomed out for me, and I was having trouble making my home loan payments," said Herlicy, 59. Then a lightbulb went off: Why not rent out a room in her Milpitas home?

She contacted HIP Housing, a San Mateo nonprofit that helps arrange shared housing. They interviewed her and two days later proposed several potential renters, one of whom moved in with Herlicy.

The extra income has relieved the financial pressure. "Now it's much easier to take care of everything on what little I'm making," she said.

Facing layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs, more people have turned to shared housing to help make ends meet. Craigslist, the online classified ad giant, says that its roommate-wanted postings over the past 12 months are up 60 percent for the Bay Area, and up 85 percent within San Francisco.

While young singles sharing digs to save money is nothing new, this new brand of "recession roommates" includes more families and couples who are sacrificing their privacy as a way to cope with the economic downturn.

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Dennis Torres, a professor of real estate and dispute resolution at Pepperdine University in Malibu (Los Angeles County), said he believes the country is at the beginning of a trend in which economic necessity will make cohabiting widespread.

"People who lost their jobs are renting out rooms in a last-ditch effort to save their property (from foreclosure)," he said. "But once they rent them out, they're not going back. They'll get used to the extra income and that will be the norm, even if they get a new job."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/08/17/MNOR196OF1.DTL#ixzz0OW4D5MUu

... as they were known then.

It makes good sense in hard times to try to make money off your property -- and it makes good sense to rent a single room if that's all you need, instead of a whole apartment.

Hekate