It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen, the out-of-work and hungry are demanding change. In a genteel Camberwell villa -- a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and servants -- impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances's life -- or how far-reaching the disturbances will be.

When college student David Rain rents a room in an unusual boardinghouse full of clay dragons, he has no idea that they, along with some lively squirrels, will help jumpstart his writing career.

After a messy break up with her longtime boyfriend, a woman faces losing both her house and her business. Consequently, she takes in three roommates: a freckled college graduate, a mysterious divorced man, and a recently widowed female chef.

"For young widow Ellen Wood, her Victorian home is a refuge--a place to feel safe with her eleven-year-old son, Charlie. But when money grows so tight that Ellen could lose the house, her sister, Hannah, makes a radical suggestion...rent out some of the rooms. Soon Ellen has three lodgers: Sabine, a German coworker of Hannah's, recently separated from her husband; Allegra, an eccentric but wise novelist; and Matt, an up-and-coming young journalist...

In 1934 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression both at home, where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

Rigsby, the landlord, rules over a rundown boarding house in a backwater university town, and spends his days snooping on his tenants and trying to seduce Ruth. Episodes include Ruth finding true love and moving out, leaving Rigsby distraught.

When Ten moves out of her parents home in the mountains to live in a boardinghouse, she finds herself becoming fast friends with her male roommates. But can love and romance be far behind? Ten Serizawa has a two-hour commute through the mountains to high school every day, so she cant spend much time hanging out with her friends in the afternoon. She decides to move into the local boardinghouse, where one of her friends and three other boys are living....

In 1932, Kit faces a very different Christmas because of her family's financial problems and allows her pride to estrange her from her best friend.

In a time of drought and economic depression in 1934, Ella Barron runs her boardinghouse in Texas while caring for her son, Solly, and responds to the calm influence of one of her boarders, David Rainwater, while facing the tension and uncertainty around her.