More share space to shave costs in recession

Monday, August 17, 2009
Carlyn Said
SFGate

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.

"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.
Financial necessity

Nancy Briggin of Fairfax had sometimes briefly rented her guest room to friends for extra money for home improvements. But after a back injury ended her working career a couple of years ago, having tenants became a necessity for her and her husband.

"The rent money, once strictly optional 'mad money,' now bridges our income-expense gap," she said.

She's learned by trial and error how to find the right housemate, and advises other landlords to explain their lifestyle and expectations in advance, take their time interviewing and trust their gut instincts.

"The key to thriving as we wait for the economy to right itself is identifying ways to tap the income potential of our assets," she said. "In many cases, as with us, it's the home."
Agency's clients double

At HIP Housing, one of several local agencies that screen and match landlords and renters at no charge, the number of clients has more than doubled this year.

"We're getting more students because they're getting their job hours cut, and then seniors whose incomes have gone down," said Barbara Liedtke, housing coordinator. "I had one senior who got a housemate to help his son who has a family and lost his banking job. (The senior) couldn't have the whole family move in with him and he couldn't help them financially on his normal income, but this way he had extra money to help them."

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."

He also sees extended family members increasingly dwelling under the same roof - "boomerang" young adults moving back with their folks, and retired people living with their grown children, for instance.
Cohabitation jumps

The Census Bureau's American Community Survey showed a jump in cohabiting in 2007, the most recent survey year. In California, the number of "family households" with a roommate stood at 228,500 in 2007, up 9.6 percent from 2006. In "nonfamily households," 674,000 reported having roommates in 2007, a 9.4 percent increase from the previous year.

Financial concerns prompted sisters Jenifer Gilbert, 32, and Lesli Walls, 46, to move in together last week.

Gilbert, who works in real estate, was sufficiently worried about her finances that she decided to give up her beloved one-bedroom apartment on Nob Hill and find something cheaper with roommates.

"When my sister in Kansas found out I planned to move, she immediately said, 'What if I move out there and move in with you?' " Gilbert said. Walls arrived last week in a car crammed with all her possessions.

"I can see us 30 years from now laughing and reminiscing about the one time we shacked up in a tiny apartment in San Francisco," Gilbert said.
Great Depression boarders

During the Great Depression, plenty of people rented out spare rooms to cope with hard times, said Los Altos resident Don McDonald, 91, whose family in Ohio took in boarders regularly.

"We all survived with one bathroom," he said. "(Boarders) always ate with us and were, in effect, part of the family. The old family photo album shows several of them over those years."

Torres thinks a return to those days may be at hand, signaling mental and cultural adjustments.

"We're the last generation of people who can afford the privacy of a single-family home," he said. "Your biggest expense is housing; if you share housing, it frees up more income."

Nonprofits affiliated with the National Shared Housing Resource Center (www.nationalshared housing.org) offer free help in arranging shared-living situations.

Local ones include:

HIP Housing, San Mateo: www.hiphousing.org

Catholic Charities Housing Development & Services, San Jose: www.ccsj.org

ECHO Housing, Livermore: www.echofairhousing.org

Tips from people experienced with home sharing:

-- Take time in selecting; meet more than once.

-- Check references.

-- Get a deposit.

-- Write up a "living together" agreement.

-- Discuss how you'll solve disputes.

-- Address problems while they're still small.

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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