The Mbeere customarily live in small, circular, thatched houses made of wooden poles and mud. A group of houses comprises a homestead, which includes families related to each other, usually through patrilineal kinship ties. In physical terms, a homestead may include a cattle kraal, goat and sheep shelters built like thatched houses, and granaries. Homesteads range in size from newly formed units composed of a married pair and their young children to long-established settlements of more than forty people. A homestead is bounded by its gardens, fallow lands, and bush areas.