Answers.Body: <p>Households can be disabled globally by disabling that contact type. This is not exposed to the UI but is still pretty easy to do:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>From the api explorer (Support -> Developer -> Api Explorer) make the following selections:
  <img src="https://i.sstatic.net/8mHeP.png" alt="API Explorer Screenshot"></li>
  <li><p>With a direct sql query:</p>
  
  <p><code>UPDATE civicrm_contact_type SET is_active = 0 WHERE name = 'Household';</code></p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Note: there may be a few places left in the UI that are hard-coded with households still available, but the above will handle the vast majority.</p>
  
  <p>Addendum: You may also want to disable the Household profile. This will remove the "New Household" links from contact autocomplete form elements. Run the following query to do that in MySQL:</p>
  
  <p>update civicrm_uf_group set is_active = 0 where name = 'new_household';</p>
  
  <p>(thanks to comment from @bgm).</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-03-24T22:02:49.430Z
Answers.Text: This just blew my mind!
Answers.UserDisplayName: Jon G - Megaphone Tech
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-03-30T13:56:33.903Z
Answers.Text: Does this also remove them from the interface completely?
Answers.UserDisplayName: michaelmcandrew
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-04-30T18:38:25.247Z
Answers.Text: You may also want to disable the Household profile. This will remove the "New Household" links from contact autocomplete form elements.
  
  `update civicrm_uf_group set is_active = 0 where name = 'new_household';`
Answers.UserDisplayName: bgm
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-01-15T16:37:30.417Z
Answers.Text: Even after taking all the steps mentioned on this & other answers, households still pop up in a few places, e.g. dedupe rules, Export -> Merge Household Members into their Households, Mailing Labels -> Merge labels for contacts belonging to the same Household.
Answers.UserDisplayName: davejenx
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-06-26T17:56:36.840Z
Answers.Text: How up to date is this information? I am asking as there have been tons of changes like with Smarty 3, the new API4 ,etc. We have no need for Households either and would seem after 9 years the ability to tick on or off might have come down the pike. Thanks!
Answers.UserDisplayName: Paul Williams
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-06-26T17:59:42.660Z
Answers.Text: @PaulWilliams it's still accurate!
Answers.UserDisplayName: Coleman
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-06-26T21:06:24.373Z
Answers.Text: @Coleman Thank you very much!
Answers.UserDisplayName: Paul Williams
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-08-13T18:26:48.567Z
Answers.Text: So what I did was change `is_reserved` to 0 instead of `is_active` using `UPDATE civicrm_contact_type SET is_reserved = 0 WHERE name = 'Household'` This allows me to then go to ADMINISTER > CUSTOMIZE DATA > CONTACT TYPES and now you can Enable or Disable households as needed (in case you want to re-enable in the future).
Answers.UserDisplayName: jsherk
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-03-24T21:57:23.403Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2018-11-20T19:56:30.337Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2018-11-20T19:56:30.337Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Coleman
Answers.Body: <p>To remove households from the interface completely:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Delete any households that may have been created and any relationships involving households (shared addresses, Household members, etc).</li>
  <li>Update the civicrm_contact_type table in the CIVI database to set the active flag for 'Household' to 0 (as per Coleman's answer)</li>
  <li>Update the civicrm_relationship_type table to set the active flags to 0 for all relationship types  that relate to households (e.g. "Head of Household for" and "Household Member of")</li>
  <li>Remove the "New Household" menu item from the CIVI > Contacts menu dropdown by going to Administer CiviCRM > Navigation Menu - (Open Contacts and right click on "New Household" and select delete.</li>
  <li>Check the changes made above are retained/reconfigured when you update CIVI</li>
  </ol>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2017-12-29T13:26:51.837Z
Answers.Text: There are many other place where Household might have been configured like Profiles, Custom Groups, Memberships and other CiviCRM settings. Also deleting Household Contact type might have serious impact on upcoming upgrades so it will be safe to disable the Contact Type rather deleting it and its related data.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Pradeep Nayak
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-06T19:58:58.970Z
Answers.Text: The SQL query for point 3 is "update civicrm_relationship_type set is_active=0 where contact_type_a='Household' OR contact_type_b='Household';" without the double quote (") marks.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Joe Murray
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-04-09T23:20:36.057Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-04-09T23:20:36.057Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Dave Florence
Answers.Body: <p>You can disable contact-types directly in the db or with the api, but a word of caution: I've seen older sites where people have messed with the basic contact types, and they've had real problems.</p>
  
  <p>Based on other answers, this may be safer to do in current versions of CiviCRM, but I recommend thorough testing of any changes you make.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-03-25T11:53:56.753Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-03-29T12:00:11.187Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2015-03-29T12:00:11.187Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Andie Hunt
Body: <p>Our organization does not use households. As a training/usability issue for our volunteers, we would like to disable the concept entirely or at least hide them from view. There does not appear to be a mechanism to do so, however.</p>
  
  <p>This feature has been requested for some time; there is a <a href="http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=3485.0">2008 thread</a> asking essentially the same question, but unfortunately it leads only to other <a href="http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,5520.15.html">dead-end threads</a>. A <a href="https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-4566">feature request</a> for the 3.0 branch was summarily closed for lack of activity.</p>
  
  <p>If there remains no configuration mechanism to remove households, has anyone developed a comprehensive list of places where households are referenced? For instance, we can remove the navigation menu items from the UI, disable the reports, and use CSS to hide mentions on some forms. We would prefer, going this route, to override a template to remove the option, but we haven't been able to locate such a template or templates.</p>
  
  <p>The same question, presumably, could be applied for anyone who does not use individuals or organizations as contact types.</p>
  
Tags: <households><custom-templates><configuration>
Title: How can I disable households?
ThreadText: # How can I disable households?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2015-03-24)
  
  Our organization does not use households. As a training/usability issue for our volunteers, we would like to disable the concept entirely or at least hide them from view. There does not appear to be a mechanism to do so, however.
  
  This feature has been requested for some time; there is a [2008 thread](http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=3485.0) asking essentially the same question, but unfortunately it leads only to other [dead-end threads](http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,5520.15.html). A [feature request](https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-4566) for the 3.0 branch was summarily closed for lack of activity.
  
  If there remains no configuration mechanism to remove households, has anyone developed a comprehensive list of places where households are referenced? For instance, we can remove the navigation menu items from the UI, disable the reports, and use CSS to hide mentions on some forms. We would prefer, going this route, to override a template to remove the option, but we haven't been able to locate such a template or templates.
  
  The same question, presumably, could be applied for anyone who does not use individuals or organizations as contact types.
  
  **Tags:** households, custom-templates, configuration
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2015-03-24. Score: 33 | Accepted answer
  
  Households can be disabled globally by disabling that contact type. This is not exposed to the UI but is still pretty easy to do:
  
  * From the api explorer (Support -> Developer -> Api Explorer) make the following selections:
    ![API Explorer Screenshot](https://i.sstatic.net/8mHeP.png)
  * With a direct sql query:
  
    `UPDATE civicrm_contact_type SET is_active = 0 WHERE name = 'Household';`
  
  Note: there may be a few places left in the UI that are hard-coded with households still available, but the above will handle the vast majority.
  
  Addendum: You may also want to disable the Household profile. This will remove the "New Household" links from contact autocomplete form elements. Run the following query to do that in MySQL:
  
  update civicrm\_uf\_group set is\_active = 0 where name = 'new\_household';
  
  (thanks to comment from @username_4).
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_2**: This just blew my mind!  
  > **username_3**: Does this also remove them from the interface completely?  
  > **username_4**: You may also want to disable the Household profile. This will remove the "New Household" links from contact autocomplete form elements.  `update civicrm_uf_group set is_active = 0 where name = 'new_household';`  
  > **username_5**: Even after taking all the steps mentioned on this & other answers, households still pop up in a few places, e.g. dedupe rules, Export -> Merge Household Members into their Households, Mailing Labels -> Merge labels for contacts belonging to the same Household.  
  > **username_6**: How up to date is this information? I am asking as there have been tons of changes like with Smarty 3, the new API4 ,etc. We have no need for Households either and would seem after 9 years the ability to tick on or off might have come down the pike. Thanks!  
  > **username_1**: @PaulWilliams it's still accurate!  
  > **username_6**: @username_1 Thank you very much!  
  > **username_7**: So what I did was change `is_reserved` to 0 instead of `is_active` using `UPDATE civicrm_contact_type SET is_reserved = 0 WHERE name = 'Household'` This allows me to then go to ADMINISTER > CUSTOMIZE DATA > CONTACT TYPES and now you can Enable or Disable households as needed (in case you want to re-enable in the future).  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_8 on 2015-04-09. Score: 12
  
  To remove households from the interface completely:
  
  1. Delete any households that may have been created and any relationships involving households (shared addresses, Household members, etc).
  2. Update the civicrm\_contact\_type table in the CIVI database to set the active flag for 'Household' to 0 (as per username_1's answer)
  3. Update the civicrm\_relationship\_type table to set the active flags to 0 for all relationship types that relate to households (e.g. "Head of Household for" and "Household Member of")
  4. Remove the "New Household" menu item from the CIVI > Contacts menu dropdown by going to Administer CiviCRM > Navigation Menu - (Open Contacts and right click on "New Household" and select delete.
  5. Check the changes made above are retained/reconfigured when you update CIVI
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_10**: The SQL query for point 3 is "update civicrm_relationship_type set is_active=0 where contact_type_a='Household' OR contact_type_b='Household';" without the double quote (") marks.  
  > **username_9**: There are many other place where Household might have been configured like Profiles, Custom Groups, Memberships and other CiviCRM settings. Also deleting Household Contact type might have serious impact on upcoming upgrades so it will be safe to disable the Contact Type rather deleting it and its related data.  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_11 on 2015-03-25. Score: 2
  
  You can disable contact-types directly in the db or with the api, but a word of caution: I've seen older sites where people have messed with the basic contact types, and they've had real problems.
  
  Based on other answers, this may be safer to do in current versions of CiviCRM, but I recommend thorough testing of any changes you make.
  
  
  ---
  
  