The bureaucrats – who I am sure were well-meaning, nice people –thought it was a great idea. The residents will share kitchens! This would be nice, they could cook together, have meals together and wouldn’t that be a good thing? Nope. It was hell. Bacon Congregate Bacon Congregate came into existence in 1984. An old […]
Read More...Hopscotch and the Art of Making Friends
Hopscotch. We played the game every day after school. We played it on the sidewalks and in the playgrounds outside the eighteen-floor brick building that was our home in Brooklyn, New York. We played as a way to hang out with each other. We were friends. We were friends because we were the same age […]
Read More...Solterra Co-Housing Paves the Way for Senior Aging-in-Place
When Shelley’s father was no longer capable of living on his own, Shelley went looking for a way for him to live. She knew that an institutional setting would not work for him. She says, “Dad had to be in control. He needed to make all his own decisions.” Shelley, who is a Canadian, researched […]
Read More...Shared Housing For Seniors—Solutions for Income and Companionship
Arnie calls her home “my accordion house” and laughs. It’s a huge Victorian building in the center of Concord, New Hampshire. Arnie inherited it from an aunt who lived on the second floor until her death. When her husband died at an early age, she was suddenly a widow of very limited means. Committed to […]
Read More...Downsizing by Buying a House Together
Downsizing is one way to age in place. But it doesn’t always mean leaving a multi-bedroom house to move into a one-room studio. Judy and her husband bought a house with Joyce and her husband as a way for both couples to downsize. Each couple had raised families in large country homes with big gardens […]
Read More...When Genna Met Sally—How Homesharing Might Start
This is a multi-part story written to demonstrate how the resources available on this site can work for you. Genna, 64, had lived in her four-bedroom home for more than twenty years. She bought it with her then husband and when they divorced she got the house. Now she was an empty-nester with children living […]
Read More...An Atmosphere of Kindness and Gentleness
“Do you see my glasses?” asks Diana, 80 plus, of her home-mate Rob who is easily 30 years younger. “Yup” he says as he gets them and hands them to her. There is a kindness and gentleness between them. How It Started Rob moved into Diana’s house when she was recovering from hip surgery. Diana […]
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