The Missing Temporal Middle
YIMSR can help people who need housing for 1-11 months
“‘Yes In My Spare Room’……isn’t that just Airbnb? This idea isn’t new.”
One commenter shared these thoughts on my very first YIMSR post, when I wrote a guest article for
‘s The Deleted Scenes. In my head, I had a few responses to this critique:YIMSR is about co-living in a shared space, whereas Airbnb has shifted more and more to a “whole private house” set-up with little interaction between hosts and guests.
Airbnbs are increasingly being banned or regulated in communities; practicing YIMSR usually doesn’t face those same restrictions.
Ultimately, YIMSR is more of an overarching value and strategy than a specific tactic. I am advocating that more people should practice intentional hospitality in their own homes. That might mean listing a room on Airbnb, but it could mean so much more.
However, another argument I realized recently is that YIMSR fulfills a niche that I’m not sure has been discussed much in housing discourse: the missing temporal middle.
Many housing advocates are already familiar with the concept of the “Missing Middle.” Daniel Parolek’s book, Missing Middle Housing, delves into this idea more, that in recent decades American housing policy has preferenced single-family detached homes on one end and many-unit apartment buildings on the other, but eschewing duplexes, fourplexes, and the like in the middle. Parolek and others argue that we need much more housing built in this “middle” category.
But as I’ve reflected, I’ve realized that I think there is another form of housing that is missing: the missing temporal middle. Let me explain.
Right now, if you want to live in a place for a short period of time, you can live in a motel, hotel, or a short-term rental. If you want to live in a place for a year or more, you can sign a lease for an apartment or purchase a home.
But where do you live if you want to stay in a place for 1-11 months? Many municipalities don’t allow short-term rental guests to reside for these lengths of time. And most landlords don’t want to lease to someone for less than 12 months.
This is the Missing Temporal Middle.
This is not a fringe problem. Lots of people might find themselves in a situation where they need to live in a community for more than a month, but less than a year. The quintessential example is college students, but there are many more:
Seasonal or remote workers
Travel nurses
People who want a change of pace or who are transitioning jobs
Members of a couple who are separating or divorcing
Refugee families who are in the process of being resettled but haven’t landed full-time employment yet and can’t afford a lease
Family members who want to be close to a dying parent in a nursing or hospice home
People in a gap year or who are discerning next steps in vocation or geography
Those who are exiting (or attempting to avoid) homelessness
Folks have sold their current house but haven’t closed on their next house yet
With some back of the envelope calculations, ChatGPT estimated for me that perhaps 8-12 million Americans every year are in need of this type of mid-term housing, but lack dignified, affordable, or legal options. That’s a lot of people!
That’s where YIMSR can come in. What would it look like for more people to be willing to open up their own homes, not for Airbnb guests, nor for tenants, but for people who are in times of transition and need a place to stay for a little while? I think it would look a lot like I’ve been proposing on this blog.
This isn’t just theoretical, I’ve lived it out. A big part of my own YIMSR story includes the various people we have hosted in our home for extended periods of time, all of whom would fit in one of the categories I mentioned:
Our first guest, H, needed a place to stay after being unable to return to her country of employment early in COVID.
Our next guest was a family of three (plus a dog) who needed a place to land for a few months due to a job transition, while they searched for long-term housing.
Our next guest, J, was a graduating college student who wanted to have a more homey end to her college experience.
HG was a new colleague who had moved to the area from out of state, and was waiting to see where her fiancé would be hired before she sought out long-term housing.
This fall, we will host a nursing professor 2-3 days/week while he begins a new job at a local university, while he and his wife figures out where exactly they want to move their family.
And that’s all just in the past few years!
Granted, there are some systems and platforms that exist to provide housing for folks who need a place to crash for 1-11 months. Dorms exist for college students, and travel nurses have a specific website for locating housing that meets their needs. Non-profits can help too; my church has two transitional (“transformational”) housing units for folks who are preparing to transition out of homelessness, but need an intermediate step for a chunk of time. So there are some people thinking about this problem in specific categories.
But in general, I think the missing temporal middle is yet another aspect of our housing shortage that does not get enough attention. A lot of the pain is invisible, but real: Refugees live in hotels for months at a time. Housing deals fall through when the buyer and seller’s moving timelines don’t line up. People have to commit to move to a new city without trying it out on a probationary period first.
However unlike the missing middle that Parolek (and others) describe, the missing temporal middle can be addressed fairly effectively without massive construction projects or re-zoning. All it would take is a larger number of Americans to say, “Yes In My Spare Room."
To open up your home for six month to a friend whose parent is dying, or to a refugee saving up for a deposit for her apartment, or to a remote worker looking to explore a new city…you may not make as much money as if you host a bunch of folks night after night through Airbnb. But I bet you can make a much bigger difference.
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