The Case for Home Sharing. In Long Form.

The rooms exist and the need exists. This piece answers the next question: what is connecting them worth? Four national figures size the opportunity, then two calculators put it in your own terms. The State Math prices what the older-adult housing shortfall costs a state and what home sharing keeps from being spent. Your Household Math shows what a match is worth inside one household's budget.

Two interactive calculators

Every state in America has more spare bedrooms in homes owned by older adults than older renters who spend more for rent than is recommended. This interactive map puts a number on that gap for all 50 states and DC: the housing math, the cost burden on older renters and homeowners alike, and each state's aging-policy status. Hover over any state for a quick read, or click for the full picture.

Interactive map

Older adults are the fastest-growing population experiencing homelessness, and the forces pushing them out of stable housing stack faster than the aging system or the housing system can answer alone. This systems brief shows where home sharing fits as preventive infrastructure, how it advances USAging's Doors to Housing priorities, and how shared infrastructure finally makes it practical to implement.

9 min read

An older adult's move usually arrives with a single name on it: a fall, a death, a tax bill. The truer story is the five to ten years before, when two or three forces were already compounding. This paper proposes a frame for the years that lie between full housing stability and the first formal step of the aging-services continuum, and argues that this is where home sharing belongs.

10 min read