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Dennis Poillier was facing a pivotal moment. After teaching in Maine public schools for more than 30 years, she was preparing to quit her career for what could become a low-paid job, but she navigates other major changes. Downsizing from the house to the condo, and her third son moves out.
One afternoon, when Poirier heard local news, she learned about Nesterly, an online platform that matches younger renters and older homeowners in search of affordable housing. The company has just launched a statewide partnership and has pitched a simple concept. In exchange for rent below the market, some tenants can help with light chores around the house.
“I'm a natural concern about money. I'm that type of person,” Poirier told Vox. “My youngest son has moved in, so I thought, 'Hmm, there's a little extra room.' I've always liked young people – I was teaching high school and unresurrected young people – and I thought this might be a good way to make up for my income. ”
Soon she matched Joseph Anzalon, a 20-year-old student at Southern Main Community College, and worked full-time at the Hyatt Hotel in Portland. Poirier did not seek help from a reap or shovel. Only people who keep their space clean and handle their own food. Anzalon was drawn to the idea of a quieter, off-campus space, costing $850 a month, hundreds cheaper than typical apartments in the area.
It's like a rental lease, but also includes shared spaces, quiet times, guests, chores and smoking expectations, he moved in August last year. “We've come quite close,” Anzalon told Vox. “We enjoyed watching the president's arguments and played the debate bingo. My family lives in Florida, so she invited me to Thanksgiving.”
Poirier and Anzalone arrangements highlight the trends to capitalize on changing demographics and acute housing shortages. When Noelle Marcus found Nesterly, she was studying urban planning at MIT, one of her statistics caught her attention. “And it uses a very conservative methodology and counts only occupied housing units,” Marcus said. “That's a lot of real estate.”
According to the apartment list, about 60% of US homes have at least one spare bedroom. This opportunity is particularly noteworthy among “empty nest households.” Zillow reports about 21 million homes where elderly children-free residents have at least two extra bedrooms. And as baby boomers retire and fertility rates drop, census data predict that by 2030, adults aged 65 and older will surpass children under the age of 18 for the first time in US history.
With the nationwide housing shortage and developers largely abandoning new entry-level home construction, the idea of ”unlocking” millions of unused bedrooms through generational home sharing has led to traction It's been acquired. Between 2017 and 2022, the number of families sharing non-relevant and living spaces has increased by over 500,000, suggesting increased acceptance of practice.
Melanie Lambrick from Vox
However, the benefits can extend beyond simply supporting young renters and older people with fixed income. Advocates view intergenerational life as a powerful tool for social isolation. Although there are limited studies examining the outcomes of such households, existing studies report that older people often feel more connected and better health than those living alone. For younger residents, especially students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the study suggests that academic achievement improves when living in a mixed-age community.
“I've seen a situation where an 18-year-old is a good friend with a 73-year-old retired Marine Sgt. You wouldn't have predicted that, but they lived together for five or six years. There was.” Atticus Leblanc, CEO of Padsplit, was founded by another company to promote housing sharing arrangements.
Today, many home sharing programs are actively encouraging these transgenerational connections. “This really is an advantage for everyone and for both parties,” said Marci Alboher, leader of Cogenerate, a nonprofit that focuses on filling in age differences. “It's not just one generation that appears to serve and rescue another generation.”
While multi-generational life in relatives has long provided a way for families to share resources and manage care, intentional home sharing among unrelated people has been the norm in the early 1970s. Tracing American roots to Philadelphia.
That was when Maggie Coon, who was forced to retire at the age of 65 from a job she loved at Presbyterian Church, founded the Grey Panthers. The organization advocated against discrimination against social security, Medicare and workplace eras, and within the first decade it grew into a movement with 100,000 members of 30 states.
As part of this work, Coon opened his Philadelphia home to the “Panther Cubs” (young activist). This is my experience in 1980 when I first started the National Shared Housing Resource Center. Programs across the United States had adopted thousands of inquiries each year by the late 1980s. Kuhn saw the sharing of homes, both as a form of affordable housing and as a way to combat social isolation.
Kuhn's idea about intergenerational housing has discovered a new urgency in West Philadelphia. Mantua's historically black neighborhood sees more long-time residents being pushed out as Drexel University expands closer. Over the past decade, the region's white population has increased by 73%, while rents have increased by 44%. In most cases, the number of households spending more than half their income on rent is an astonishing 454% increase.
In response, the leader has partnered with Drexel through the Mantua Civic Association to match students with seniors in the area. Again, I have two goals. Help long-time residents provide affordable rental options for students while maintaining or achieving homeownership.
The vision will help leaders receive state and charity funds in 2021 to help existing Mantua residents repair duplexes, providing traction to help homeowners begin sharing their homes. I've won it. Now, the leader will partner with local developers to build a $60 million combined project. This includes 18 duplexes and triplexes aimed at intergenerational home sharing. Elderly Mantua residents buy real estate and rent several units to cover mortgages.
These home sharing programs recruit renters from Drexel's long-standing community-based writing workshops, a free arts program for students and local Philadelphians. The leader plans to incorporate journaling and storytelling sessions into a home sharing model called Second Story Collective, and is aiming to expand to areas adjacent to universities beyond Philadelphia. In 2022, they received a $1 million National Science Foundation grant to explore replicating this model nationwide.
“We've seen a lot of experience in the world,” said Rachel Wenrick, executive director of arts and civic innovation at Drexel's Community Partnership Office. “This provides it while bringing university resources to withstand the solutions the neighborhood itself has identified.”
Such institutional partnerships show promise, but maintaining intergenerational housing can be challenging. The model pioneered by Kuhn often suffered from sustainability, with hundreds of home shares finally shutting down a few years later. Finding trustworthy tenants that homeowners trust, handling legal and administrative tasks, and collecting payments has proven overwhelming. “The Grey Panthers were popularizing intergenerational home sharing with these same values that help people age and create more affordable housing options,” said Marcus of Nesterly. It's there. “But they were very labor intensive and paper-driven.”
Today, automated background checks and payments, secure messaging, and video calling portals are supposed to modernize the process and make it more convenient than the 80s and 90s. However, the technology itself can present new barriers, especially for older people who may struggle with both awareness and access to online platforms.
Savenia Falquist looks at these challenges firsthand. As executive director of Homeshare Oregon, founded in 2021 to deal with the state's housing crisis, she realized that digital solutions are not enough. “What I feel and what we're moving forward is that we need to build capacity across the state to have a coordinator in the community where we work directly with people,” she told Vox. “They need to help post photos on their pages and help them match those people with the renters.”
Barriers go beyond technology. Alpha Hernandez, who directs the home sharing program through the Homeless Intervention Services in Orange County, California, points to deeper safety concerns. “The older people prefer dating ideas, but even though we are there to promote and do monthly check-in and screenings, they are prone to identity theft and fraud, so we're going to take part. I think there's more fear,” she told Vox.
Melanie Lambrick from Vox
Many view private living spaces as a last resort, sharing with strangers. Ridesharing on Uber or Lyft had to overcome what was considered strange or dangerous before it became mainstream. Local regulations combine these challenges. Some communities still have old laws enforcement of traditional nuclear family life arrangements. Their zoning code defines “family” as being related to blood, marriage, or adoption, with the exception of “domestic servants.” These restrictive rules can be made not only for home sharing programs but also for more, often immigrant intergenerational families living together.
“The law is in place when people want them,” said Leblanc of Padsplit. “If you have a neighbor in your neighborhood who doesn't want affordable housing… you're definitely seeing the problem with it.”
Advance the future of home sharing
Despite these barriers, several states have begun updating their housing policy. Over the past few years, Colorado, Iowa, Oregon and Washington all passed all laws banning or limiting family-based occupancy restrictions. At the federal level, the Housing and Urban Development Agency took a step forward in 2021 by enabling housing vouchers to be used in shared housing arrangements.
The conversation is expanding beyond mere policy changes. Last spring, housing, finance and social welfare leaders were convened for the Harvard University Symposium on the Future of Intergenerational Housing. Their October report highlighted the choice of designs that could promote connection. Even spaces as mundane as lobbies and stairwells have been rethinked. One New York City residential complex has a laundry room next to a rooftop garden, with parents and grandparents tending to play with their children, practice Tai Chi, and do gardening projects while washing clothes. there was.
Some jurisdictions learn from parallel efforts. After California eased the restrictions on accessory housing units in 2016, the developers built over 80,000 new housing units over the next six years, offering models from Massachusetts, Oregon and Vermont. Nesterly's Marcus believes there is a possibility of similar momentum in housing sharing if more local governments create supportive policies. She points to the UK rent room A scheme. There, homeowners can earn tax-free rental income by renting rooms to their main residence.
In Tampa, Florida, 61-year-old Quantia Hollowell shares a six-bedroom pad split home with five people. Although initially attracted to more affordable rents, she has an unexpected bond with her 20-year junior housemate Benny. Her “adoption” drives her to medical appointments and helps her with errands. “Benny, he loves me, and I love him,” she said. “I hug each other every day.”
What started as a practical solution turned out to be something neither of us expected.
