Aging Baby Boomers Becoming the Roommate Generation

[Purveyor]

May 4, 2014
By ALAN FARNHAM via World News

There was Felix-and-Oscar. There were The Golden Girls. Such arrangements--adults living with adult roommates--are about to get less comic and more common, say experts on housing and on the aging of the Baby Boom.

One pair of roommates—Carol Loper, 69, and Gerry Venable, 74—recently was profiled on the front page of the L.A. Times. An executive of the non-profit agency that put the two of them together, tells ABC News she sees the number of such households growing.

Rachel Caraviello, vice president of Affordable Living for the Aging (ALA), says that nationally there are about 130,000 households where the cohabiters are aged 50 or older, and where they have no familial relationship or romantic connection.

Caraviello views these arrangements as one more manifestation of the “sharing economy”: Here, one party typically is house-rich but cash-poor; and the other has money or services to contribute.

Rodney Harrell, PhD, a specialist on housing with the AARP’s Public Policy Institute, tells ABC News the range of agreements struck can include one party’s helping the other with shopping, transportation, cooking or informal care-giving. He believes there will be more demand for roommate and other sharing programs as the Baby Boom ages.

Baby Boomers living longer, not healthier

MORE...

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/aging-baby-boomers-roommates/story?id=23570035

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I'm ahead of my time...

Although I'm not actually a boomer. Had roommates/housemates most of my adult life.

[mopinko]

2. especially as we finally get divorced.

finally have an empty nest, including the hubbie. without the kids, there just wasnt much point.
plan to start a home for wayward old ladies. dont want to leave my big house nor do i care to rattle around in it.

have a friend from high school moving in next month.
probably will have a kid bounce back home next spring. he's doing an internship so he can help me with my farm. he and i are both hoping he can find a nice farm girl.

its weird.

[whistler162]

3. WOW... as neighbor growing up must have been ahead

of their time.

Next door neighbors where I grew up for where a couple of elderly, to me, old ladies. One had family, a son, living a few houses further down the street.

I don't think this is new or shocking.