Seniors Seeking Roommates: ‘Golden Girls,’ Please Apply
From Realtor.com - Clare Trapasso is the senior news editor of realtor.com.
Having roommates has been a godsend for 83-year-old Freda Schaeffer.
Having roommates has been a godsend for 83-year-old Freda Schaeffer.
The retired secretary began renting out the extra rooms in her three-bedroom, brick home in Brooklyn, NY, to fellow seniors after her husband died about eight years ago.
“It helps with finances,” says Schaeffer, who is on a meager fixed income from Social Security. “And it’s very nice to have a friendly person in the house.”
As housing prices across the nation continue to reach dizzying heights, it’s no longer just young millennials moving in with one another to save some bucks on rent. These days, more seniors, particularly single women, are taking a page straight out of the ’80s cult-classic “The Golden Girls” (or Netflix’s newer hit sitcom, “Grace and Frankie”) and getting a roommate.
To those who are joining the geriatric group–living parade, it’s a bit like college living, 50 or 60 years later—minus the keg stands.
Senior housing organizations across the nation are reporting a surge in demand from the young and old alike to move into the spare rooms of lonely and often lower-income elderly homeowners. This provides the homeowners with the money and companionship they need to maintain and manage to stay in their homes, instead of moving in with family or into a nursing home.
“It is creating affordable housing and preventing homelessness,” says Linda Hoffman, president of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, of the growing trend. “It’s keeping people out of institutions. It’s keeping people from losing their homes.”
In 2015, there were about 703,000 households in which someone lived with a nonrelative over the age of 65, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Only about 1% to 1.2% of the population over the age of 50 has lived with roommates over the past 15 or so years, according to AARP, a Washington, DC–based nonprofit and lobbying group for older Americans. But the group anticipates that percentage could rise as more baby boomers, a much larger generation than their predecessors, retire.
That makes sense, as the median income of those over 65 was just $20,600 in 2014, according to the most recent data available from AARP. It was significantly lower for women, who often outlive their husbands, at $15,800.
Finding the perfect (room)mate
Cohabiting has worked well for Schaeffer’s Brooklyn roommate of a little more than a year, 66-year-old Loretta Halter.
“We get along extremely well,” says Halter, a retired grocery store manager. “Here we are all doing our own little thing, and [then we] come home and hear stories about how the other’s day has been.”
Halter sold her home and truck in Georgia and moved to New York City about four years ago to live out her dream of spending her retirement going to museums and attending plays and book signings in the city. Scared of potentially dangerous Craigslist roommates and scams, she initially rented a room in a private home. When that didn’t work out, she turned to the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, which helped her find Schaeffer.
The foundation puts home hunters and elderly owners into a database and tries to then match them up according to their needs. They meet with a social worker and then chat on the phone before an in-person meeting is arranged.
“It’s like a date,” Hoffman says of the first meeting. Potential tenants are encouraged to ask about whether alcohol and, ahem, overnight guests of the opposite sex are allowed in the home.
The agency typically places about 80 to 100 people annually, and demand is rising along with monthly rents, Hoffman says. Most roommates contribute to the household expenses and exchange services, like grocery shopping, in lieu of rent.
For Halter, the arrangement leaves her with enough money to attend the cultural events she came to New York to enjoy—and still come home to a safe neighborhood. In exchange, she contributes to household expenses and helps Schaeffer around the house by taking out the trash and draining the boiler.
“We look out for each other,” Halter says.
The good, bad, and ornery
Such arrangements can enable roommates to have enough money to retire early, take the trip of a lifetime, or even hire a home health aide, says Michele Fiasca, founder of Portland, OR–based Let’s Share Housing. The business connects seniors with potential roommates through meet-and-greet events held twice a month.
“It’s a lifestyle choice where people can actually pool resources and be able to work less and have more time to themselves,” says Fiasca, who’s seen interest in the program jump about 50% compared with last year. “The great thing about people pooling resources is, you can afford a home that’s much nicer than what you could get for yourself.”
Indeed, about 43% of Americans over the age of 45 said they would get a roommate to help out with chores in a 2014 AARP survey of more than 1,000 participants. In addition, 26% said they would move in with a roommate to supplement their income.
But while having a roommate may be the stuff of sitcoms, it isn’t always a barrel of laughs.
Aspiring roomies should really get to know each other to ensure they’re compatible before moving in, warns Fiasca. They can hang out a few times or a take a trip together, she says. And they should definitely do a “suitcase test” where they live together for about 10 days before hiring a U-Haul.
They should also sign agreements making it crystal clear what the tenant and homeowner will and won’t do, and how much money will be exchanged. That ensures no one gets upset when a boarder who was supposed to help out with some light chores refuses to refinish the floors or clean out the litter boxes of their new roommate’s 12 cats.
But even if the roomies refrain from squabbling over whose turn it is to do the dishes, the arrangements often hit an expiration date when one person starts having health problems, says Andrew Carle, chief operating officer of assisted living provider Meridian Senior Living.
“If your roommate has a stroke, who’s going to bathe her?” says Carle, also a part-time professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. “If she’s got Alzheimer’s and she starts to wander, who’s going to find her?”
Finding good roommates at any age is pretty tricky, says Mark Stewart, program coordinator at Shared Housing of New Orleans, a group that provides a roommate matchmaking service for the elderly.
“A lot of the homeowners can be pretty ornery,” he says of his graying clients. “But when you get a pair that works well, [and] they’re almost always older women, it works perfectly.”
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