Housing Unit

In the 1970s, MASH was all the rage. All we needed was a piece of paper, a pencil, and some highly technical paper-folding skills, and we could attempt to see into our future and determine, among other things, whether we’d end up living in a mansion (M), an apartment (A), a shack (S), or a house (H). In other words, we were trying to figure out what kind of housing unit we’d end up in.

A housing unit is a place where folks can live as a single household, whether it’s a mansion, an apartment, a shack, etc. If we can live there and have direct access to the outside world (like through our own front door or the lobby of an apartment building), it’s a housing unit.

Sometimes a single house can be considered to have multiple housing units...like if our daughter and her kids live in the in-law suite in our basement. There are also some places that don’t technically count as housing units, even though people temporarily live there, like dorm rooms and military barracks.