Seeking Roommate to Share Bills

Maria Machado estimates that women over 50 make up about three out of four of the Dallasites seeking to cut their living expenses either by renting out a room in their home or by renting from a homeowner.

Shared housing often isn’t their first choice. “We like our independence,” said Machado, head of the Shared Housing Center, a non-profit roommate matching service in Dallas. But “house rich and money poor” older women will turn to house-sharing when they become widowed or if Social Security is their sole source of retirement income, she said. Companionship is another benefit of match-ups, whether with another senior or a younger adult.

The Shared Housing Center is part of a national network of programs matching up homeowners with responsible, low-income adult renters. In another form of house-sharing, two or a group of people will pool their resources to buy a house and share the mortgage, upkeep costs, and taxes.

The network created a website, the National Shared Housing Resource Center, that lists agencies in 23 states providing these services. Many major cities (though not Atlanta or Detroit) have agencies, and several states have more than one (California has a dozen). Many programs in the network conduct background checks, the website says.

To find a house-sharing program in your city, click here.  To read about “success stories,” click here and here.

Jamie Hopkins predicted “the Golden Girls scenario” will become more common as baby boomers age, and he recommended it as an option in his new book, “Retirement Risks: How to Plan Around Uncertainty for a Successful Retirement.”

Homeowners “say, ‘I’m going to live here as long as I can, and that’s my plan.’ But if people want to age in place, you’ve got to come up with a way to generate income from this asset.”

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