To Afford Aging in Place, Older Adults Turn to ‘Golden Girls’ Housing

As housing affordability worsens, older adults are reviving the 'Golden Girls' model of shared living—and it's working, per KFF Health News. In Denver, eighty-nine-year-old Shirley Jennett rents a spare bedroom to seventy-nine-year-old Susan Beese for eight hundred dollars a month; Beese helps with yard work and cooking. The need is urgent: roughly a third of U.S. households headed by someone sixty-five or older spend more than thirty percent of their income on housing. About fifty-five nonprofits nationwide now facilitate these matches, and several states are moving to support the trend—Colorado has already banned city restrictions on unrelated roommates, while Pennsylvania and Connecticut have advanced Golden Girls bills to ease zoning barriers.

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