> Housing unit 1. A couple owns their home. The woman’s parents live with them.
> Housing unit 2. A couple owns their home. Their son, a recent college graduate, lives with them.
> Housing unit 3. A man owns his home. A friend lives with him.
> Housing unit 4. A couple owns their home. Their two young children live with them.
> Housing unit 5. Three roommates rent their home. The owner lives elsewhere.
> As illustrated in Figure 1, these five housing units are home to 14 adults. Because four of these five housing units have their respective owners as residents, the owner-occupancy rate—the measure traditionally viewed as the homeownership rate—on the cul-de-sac is 80 percent. However, because only seven of the 14 adults are actually owners of the homes they live in, the HPOP is much lower, at 50 percent.
I think 1, 2, and 4 should all count as “owning their home.” The new measure is also a recipe for confounding attempts to compare the metrics over time, as demographic change brings in cultures that embrace multi-generational living. So what seems to be a drop in homeownership rate could instead reflect a growing and aging sub-population where the cultural preference is for parents to live with adult children instead of separately.