Living alone might actually be unhealthy.   “Loneliness Harms Health” on the Association for PsychCentral.com summarizes the longer book, “Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection,” by Drs. Caccioppo and Patrick.

Their basic point is that loneliness has negative physical effects on the body. These effects become more pronounced as we get older. From the article,  this summary: “Loneliness not only alters behavior, but loneliness is related to greater resistance to blood flow through your cardiovascular system…. Loneliness leads to higher rises in morning levels of the stress hormone cortisol, altered gene expression in immune cells, poorer immune function, higher blood pressure, and an increased level of depression. Loneliness also is related to difficulty getting a deep sleep and a faster progression of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Sharing housing can do much to alleviate a certain kind of loneliness. Someone in the house to whom one can say “good morning,” and “how was your day?” provides  social interaction.  For elderly people this may be especially helpful, since they are often socially isolated when they can’t drive and their life-long connections with family and friends are gone due to death and infirmity.

A good article on the problem of loneliness in retirement. The author Cathy Severson describes the problem and then offers several suggestions: volunteer, make friends with younger people, take a class, and move your home to one in a community.

Of course, I’m going to point out that by sharing housing one can avoid moving AND reap the benefit of having a person at home. How the housemate interacts with the retiree depends entirely on what they set up as the arrangement.

The arrangement can be simply two people sharing a roof with independent lives.  However, there is someone to say hello and good morning. A casual conversation may develop. Or a retiree might specify a desire to share meals as part of the arrangement.

Inviting a younger family member or friend to share a home has worked for a number of people. Also possible is a good friend or someone you know from the community.

There are some programs that do the work of housemate matches – they are listed in the links to the right. In most areas, householders will have to do their own work in finding a suitable housemate. When my book is available, it offers a step-by-step guide about how to find a good housemate. There are parts of it on this site. The key is to interview carefully!

I found this quote from a NY Times article (July 16, 2008) about HomeShare. In it Kirby Dunn, director of HomeShare Vermont is quoted as saying, “When you look at the data on people living alone, they tend to die younger and be sicker. We’ve done surveys, and people say they’re happier, sleeping and eating better and feel safer in their homes with someone around. If I sold you that as a drug, you’d pay thousands.”

Isn’t that the truth? So why aren’t more seniors sharing housing?

“Milky Way, a Jack Russell terrier/corgi/Chihuahua mix has been called a hero after getting help when her owner suffered a stroke and collapsed on the bathroom floor in December” thus begin the article in the Post Bulletin.  It’s a great story. The dog reacted to her collapse by racing to the housemate’s bedroom door and scratching at it furiously. The owner survived the stroke due to getting to medical care quickly.

What if there had been no housemate? 6.6 million seniors live alone. Getting to medical care quickly is the key to preventing serious brain injury when a stroke occurs. I think more people could be sharing housing. In this story, the housemates are sisters. Family members are an obvious first choice for sharing a roof. The benefits of living with a family member with shared history, relationships, culture and love are wonderful. However, there can be many reasons that it isn’t possible to live with family. In that case, finding a good housemate is key.

There are so many good people who need housing. It would be good to pair up. The key is to choose your housemate carefully.

“We have better instincts.” That’s what my new friend Mary said to me when I was telling her about the idea that more senior citizens could be sharing housing.

That’s a hopeful idea. Seniors have spent a lifetime of living. Even if they haven’t shared their housing, they have certainly met many people through work and social activities.  They have had the opportunity to observe and to participate. They’ve learned when their first instinct about a person turned out to be true and when it didn’t.

It would be interesting to read stories about interviews when you immediately knew it would or wouldn’t work with the home seeker. Do you have such a story?

Action News in Las Vegas did a short piece on a senior considering renting a room in her house to manage her difficult finances.  It describes Rita, who after her husband died lost his pension and veteran’s benefits (reducing her income by 70%) and can no longer afford her home. She really wants to stay in her home, so she’s looking for a housemate. The final line of the video transcript on the web site is cautionary. It leaves one with the impression that it is dangerous to offer housing to a stranger.

The actual video clip concludes with common sense suggestions from AARP. These suggestions include meeting the home seeker in a public place, checking references, and trying to find someone through a community group.  Also Rita was finding it expensive to advertise. She and many in here generation aren’t Internet users – so she doesn’t know how easy it is to use Craigslist.

There is information on this blog about checking references, and lots of other information she, and seniors like her, might find useful.

More information in my book when it gets published.

There are programs that take on responsibility for matching householders with home seekers. In general these programs are non profit social service programs focusing on people in need for reasons of age, disability or low-income.

The National Shared Housing Resource Center provides a directory of programs in states, updated in March of 2009. A casual count suggests that there are less than 50 programs throughout the country. There is no indication of how effective they are.

Problem is that it takes an enormous amount of energy to make a very few matches. I’m thinking that it ought to be possible for householders and home seekers to find each other through an internet matching service. Most people I suggest this to shudder in horror. Seems to me that the element of personal selection would add greatly to the willingness of householders and home seekers to participate in a homeshare program.

What do you think?

Here’s an article, published by the AARP on middle-aged single women choosing to live together. It was written in 2007. I wonder how many more people are discovering the pleasures of sharing housing?

Local columnist, Joyce Marcel, writes a insightful column about the relationships between elderly white seniors in Florida living with caretakers coming from different cultures.

As I interview people sharing houses,  I notice a generational shift about sharing housing. The folks who came of age in the late 60’s and after, are more comfortable with the idea that the WWII generation.  This makes sense. The WWII generation came of age when marriage, 4 children families, and a stay-at-home mom were the norm.

These folks, now in their eighties (more or less) just have a harder time imagining how it would be to have someone, not in their family, live with them. They simply didn’t have any experience of group homes in their formative years.  And yet maybe this elderly person needs the informal social exchange that I think is so valuable in sharing housing.  How important is it to have someone to say “good morning,”  “good night,” and “how was your day?”  I think it can be very important. I remember my elderly great aunt who lived in a big house in Washington DC by herself. She had no social life, all her friends had died. She talked daily with her sister, my grandmother who lived in New York City.  My aunt managed her loneliness by drinking. I wonder how different it would have been for her if she had shared her house so that there was life in it.

There are programs for matching seniors with younger people who offer work in exchange for rent. These programs are few and far between. And they are hard to set up – in part because the elderly are resistant to sharing their homes. I think they need to hear good stories of successful house sharing relationships. Do you have a story? Tell us.