While I was eldercaregiving in the Vortex, I watched the economy, healthcare industry, and other essential human needs and rights deteriorating as conservatives gained power.  And this was before trump, who is taking our social foundation to a new all-time low.  I predicted then that people would find themselves increasingly banding together in nonconventional family/communal living arrangements in order to survive and make ends meet.

Economy experts are now observing this phenomenon becoming more common, on many levels of society.  Older people without family or resources to fall back on are finding and living with others in the same boat, and pooling resources to pay bills and look out for each other.  Adult kids of different parents, struggling just to find living wages, never mind affordable college educations, are spending longer periods living under parents’ roofs to save money.  Everywhere in between on the spectrum, family structures that no longer function are giving way to nontraditional arrangements that do.

It’s a form of social evolution and survival of the fittest.  You must adapt to survive.  We were heading in this direction already, but trump has ensured that we’re screwed unless we improvise and devise new strategies on our own.  The old safety nets are no longer assured.  The very founding principles that define our democracy are no longer respected by our so-called leaders and their mindless followers.  We’re pretty much left to our own devices.

So life goes on in our own nonconventional household, as in others.  Without it, I’d probably be homeless under my proverbial overpass.  I’m one of the fortunate ones.