Multi-Generational Housing Article

Last week the Wt featured an article about an elder taking on a college student as her roommate. One roommate is 85, the other is 27. Such arrangements are growing. For these two roommates, they learned about each other through an agency, "Nesterly, an online home-sharing agency that matches young renters with not-so-young people looking to supplement their incomes and share their space."  The arrangement is more than just renting space. For these two roommates, "[the owner] would rent the first floor of her home to [the college student] for $700 a month in exchange for help with the housework and gardening and occasional grocery runs. And [the college student] would get a safe and spacious place to live just six miles from Boston and a 30-minute drive from her robotics engineering job in Beverly, Mass.

Is multi-generational housing growing in popularity? According to the article

About 18 percent of Americans live in multigenerational households — meaning two or more adult generations — according to a study from Pew Research Center published this year. Such arrangements have quadrupled in the United States since the 1970s, with about 60 million U.S. residents now living with adults who are of a different generation, according to the study.

Contributing to that trend is that more young people are priced out of the housing market and more seniors want to age in place, said  [the] executive director of Generations United, a D.C.-based organization that focuses on programs and policies that connect generations.

The article notes that some universities offer such intergenerational roommate matching programs.Seems like a win-win!