Norma, now 95, has been living with housemates for ten years. She finds her them through Home Share Now , a matching service based in Barre, Vermont. She knew about home share programs because she had had an aunt in the Burlington Vermont area who had been very content with a housemate she had through […]
Read More...Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You
“Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You” is the magnet on her refrigerator. It is a brave, optimistic attitude. Joy summons it up as she copes with her husband’s illness and their growing infirmities. We first met in the late 1960’s and have stayed friends. Her sturdy Russian husband, Walt, worked well into his […]
Read More...Sweet Surprise in Discovering Shared Housing
“It’s a sweet surprise to me,” says Janet about living with Kathleen as home-mates. How It Happened Kathleen and Janet were already friends. They met when Janet was Kathleen’s Episcopal priest, and Kathleen served on the vestry (a church board). Their friendship included vacationing together – Kathleen with her husband and son. After Janet had […]
Read More...When Bureaucrats Mandate Sharing
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 […]
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