The Province

North American homes will increasingly house multi-generational families as affordability wanes and cultural attitudes and demographics shift.

Speakers at the Urban Development Institute Alberta conference this week in Edmonton said homes filled with grandparents and adult children and their kids will be more commonplace.

“We’re heading back to the Waltons,” said Jonathan David Miller, a New York-based realestate analyst.

“We’re going to see more of that and we’re going to see people living more in smaller places.”

Miller said the new North American economy is shedding highly paid manufacturing jobs and creating new ones in lowerpaid sectors such as retail and temporary services and North Americans are carrying more personal debt….

There are already changes signalling more density for singlefamily homes.

O’Byrne said about 600,000 to 700,000 homes in Canada are multi-generational already. “Child care costs is a big component and wanting people to go into mortgages together.”…