Boarding House v. House

[Ludovin]

So, I noticed at the start of the game (Hard) that a lot of people love to take as much food as they can whenever the first house is built. This leaves whoever has the last house built almost always either freezing, starving or otherwise just not surviving past the second or third winter (they never seem to catch up). So, I was wondering: Would building a boarding house be ideal? What are the disadvantages? Especially during hard starts, you'd have all of your food, firewood and clothing in one place, which would allow you to not worry as much about food production. I know it costs more than 5 houses, but still. Trade offs.

[Operation40]

i see alot of guys building boarding houses here, but I have much better luck just building a single house the first year. 1 single house is enough to get everybody warm, and takes a fraction of the time to build compared to a boarding house. so I don't bother with it. I'd much rather get 1 house out of the way each year or so than have to spend an entire season building a giant project right when I start..

[Kinjiru]

I am currently having an issue where 2 people in my hard start game don't want to live in the boarding house. They are flagged homeless, even though the boarding house has tons of space left.

[Jester]

boarding house handles 5 families. So a single unmarried person is considered a family all by themselves. So it's entirely possible to only have 5 people in the boarding house, and it would be considered full.

[Kinjiru]

Ah, thanks for that info, Jester. I wasn't aware it had such a low family cap!