Kathy
read your post from earlier this month.
Housing needs...in research for genealogy there are many single people in censcus returns who lived as "Boarder" within family homes.Tracing the person back to birth location it can seen that often in Scotland women left the small farming community to work in the city.Men as officers in the emerging police force.
Not being able to afford a whole house they often took one or even two rooms with a family.Teachers often lived like this near a school as their work place.Very often a widow rented rooms to boarders...
One of my ancestors when widowed moved to the city to do this in order to keep her family after a young father fell to his death.The new start in the city meant she stayed in a good area and the teacher and pupil teacher were her means of living.
Like the idea of spending time with your family in Europe as well as your homeland.

so new ways of finding accomodation may not be that new...