Here is an innovative idea. Invest in shared housing. This is what Jude and her husband have done. They created a shared house with six bedrooms that they rent out as a house share. They do not live in the house. How It Started It all started when Jude and her husband bought a house […]
Read More...A Home-Mate Is Not A Caretaker (But Can Make a Difference)
Sharon (not her real name) left her community of twenty-five years to move 1500 miles to a new town, new state, and different culture ( New England vs. Texas) because her daughter insisted on it. Her daughter had her reasons: her mother was developing dementia and since she lived alone there was no way that […]
Read More...Housemates Matching—How it Works for Norma
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 […]
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