Staying in the Home You Love.
A Guide to Home Sharing After 55.

Most people we meet at HomeShare Oregon do not lead with money. They lead with a feeling. The house is quieter. The grocery run feels longer. The property tax notice arrived again, a little higher than last year. None of these are emergencies. Together, they are the slow drift that pushes capable, beloved people out of homes they could otherwise keep for many more years.

The math itself is not complicated. A spare bedroom in a Portland home, shared with a vetted housemate, can offset hundreds of dollars in monthly costs and bring company into the kitchen at the same time. What is hard is not the math. What is hard is the question that comes before it: who would I share my home with, and how would I know I could trust them?

What home sharing actually is

Home sharing is when one person, the home provider, opens a private room in their home to another person, the home seeker, in exchange for rent, help around the house, or both. It is not Airbnb. It is not a subletting app. It is not a roommate ad on a bulletin board. The match is curated by a nonprofit platform, not by an algorithm that does not know you.

HomeShare Online is the platform our nonprofit, HomeShare Oregon, owns and operates. It is the only nonprofit home sharing technology in the country, purpose built for aging in place, social isolation, and housing displacement. More than 80,000 people have joined the platform since launch, with over 17,000 active today. In Oregon alone, 6,691 people have used HomeShare Online to find a housemate since 2021. Of those who reported matching, 80% were still stably sharing a home 6 months later. The City of Portland selected us as the partner for its home sharing pilot, which means our work is now part of the local response to housing pressure, not separate from it.

Who lives in the spare room

The home seekers we match with Portland home providers are people you would recognize from your own life. A new graduate student. A working professional whose company moved them to Portland and who is tired of paying for an apartment with two empty rooms. A retired teacher who downsized from her own house and would rather live with someone than alone. A widowed neighbor who is between selling and settling.

Every home seeker on the platform completes a background check, an application, and a values match with their potential home provider. You meet, you talk about what mornings look like, you talk about pets, you talk about what privacy means in your home. You decide. We do not match anyone you have not chosen.

The connection part is not a side effect

Public health researchers have started measuring loneliness as a clinical risk factor in older adults. The numbers are stark. Chronic isolation in older adulthood carries a mortality risk on the order of regular smoking. It is associated with higher rates of cognitive decline, depression, and slower recovery from illness. Most of us know this in our bodies before we know it in research. The day feels longer in a quiet house. Small decisions get harder. The phone, even when you mean to use it, sometimes just stays on the counter.

Home sharing does not eliminate loneliness, and it is not a clinical intervention. What it does is something simpler. It puts another person in the next room. Someone who comes home in the evening. Someone who notices if you have not been at breakfast. Someone who is in the rhythm of your life without asking you to change it.

What it costs and what is included

HomeShare Online is built to be economical. Home providers and home seekers each pay $125, and that single fee covers third party identity verification, a comprehensive background check that stays valid for 6 months, 6 months of access to the matching platform and the home sharing resources that come with it, and a refundable $50 deposit. When you find a housemate or decide to leave the platform, you tell us and we refund the deposit. There is no commercial markup. Partner organizations sometimes provide discount codes to their members, so if you came to us through a faith community, senior center, or neighborhood program, ask if a code is available.

Home sharing is a first instinct, not a last resort. It is one of the most cost effective ways to stay where you have built a life, with someone you have chosen. If the math is starting to feel heavy, or the quiet is starting to feel loud, this is worth fifteen minutes of your time.

Get matched

Visit info.homeshareonline.org/hso to see if you are a fit for the Portland pilot. The application takes a few minutes and the platform walks you through what comes next.