I could have gone with a number of headlines for this one:

Why Living in a D.C. Group House Hurts Us All…

Why Crashing on Your Sister’s Couch for Six Months Hurts Us All…

Why Not Divorcing Your Spouse Hurts Us All…

The Washington Post reported this morning that the creation of new “households has fallen to some of the lowest levels in a generation, a trend that threatens to prolong the recession.”

More specifically, between March 2007 and March 2008, the number of new households grew by less than half the rate of the previous year. So one can only imagine what kind of change March 2008 to March 2009 brought.

Not surprisingly, a lot of the drop has to do with unemployment numbers, and “with unemployment not expected to peak until next year,”  matters look to be getting worse before they get better, as the story states.

I guess the good news is that people aren’t losing their desire to buy new houses—-we still believe in that good old American dream. We just can’t afford it.

“They call it pent-up demand and regard it as a good omen for the housing market. Past recessions have shown that “household formation comes back quickly . . . if people even think the employment situation is improving,” said George Masnick, a demographer for Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.”

Image by Stephen Glauser, Flickr Creative Commons