TL;DR
For many older homeowners, income no longer covers the cost of living. Across the United States, financial pressure drives about 120,000 of their moves each year. Few of these are foreclosures. Most are, on paper, a choice, but rising costs leave homeowners feeling they have none. Those who sell often only buy time before the same gap opens again. Of the 13.5 million older homeowners who cannot cover their basic costs or are barely covering them, 3.1 million to 4.2 million could close that gap by renting out a spare room, depending on the rent, with income enough not just to get by but to have more room to live.
Most older homeowners who feel forced to move are not being foreclosed on. They move because their income has stopped covering the cost of living. This page follows those moves: who is at risk, what is driving them, where people go, whether selling the home brings lasting stability, and how many could stay by sharing it.
The pressureIncome that no longer covers the cost of living
Of households headed by someone 62 or older who own their home, with or without a mortgage, either cannot cover their basic costs or are barely covering them.
Of every 100 older homeowners in
Households headed by someone 62 or older who own their home
Paying off the house does not end the pressure: of those who cannot cover their basic costs, own their home outright, about the same share as all older homeowners.
We compared each household's income with the Elder Index, which measures what an older adult needs to budget each month for housing, food, transportation, health care and other basics in their state. Income means everything the household takes in: Social Security, pensions, retirement account withdrawals and any wages. Savings are not counted. Barely covering means income that covers the basic Elder Index budget but is no more than one and a half times it.
Most at risk
Living alone
of older homeowners who live alone cannot cover their basic costs, against of two-person households. One income has to carry every bill a home brings.
What is driving these movesThe cost of insuring and running a home
Property tax is still the largest single housing bill for older homeowners in , about a year, but after inflation it grew only between 2018 and 2024. The bills that grew fastest were the cost of insuring the home, up , and utilities, up , while income stayed flat. Older homeowners with incomes under $50,000 lost ground: after inflation, their income fell by about .
Change in yearly cost, 2018 to 2024, after inflation
Where older homeowners goWhen cost is the reason for a move
Our Before the Move research asked why older adults move. Income is the catalyst in about of moves by older homeowners in : about households a year, out of .
Here is where those older homeowner households go each year, and under each, how the money from selling their home holds up over the rest of their lives. To see what a sale would net on your own budget, the Sharing or Selling section of Household Math runs the numbers.
The modeling for these percentages is in the citations, definitions and sources below.
Home sharing
Stay home and shareRent from a spare room can let them stay
Each year about of older homeowners who move for cost move in with someone who is not family, and pay rent to do it: about households a year in . A homeowner with a spare room could be the one receiving that rent, and stay.
What renting out a spare room does for older homeowners who cannot cover their basic costs and have a room to share
households in ; of them have two or more spare rooms
The gap closes when rent from the room covers what income does not. It stays closed for as long as the room is shared, so the household can stay for its expected lifetime. Nearly closed: the rooms they have, at a market rent, bring income to at least 75% of their basic costs.
Where a room is not quite enough, other help can close the rest: property tax relief, help with utility bills and repairs, and benefits that lower everyday costs, listed for each state in Help with housing costs. Staying keeps the home's equity in hand, and as home values rise, growing.
The value of home sharingWhat a shared room makes possible
Of the older homeowners at risk, have a spare room. With a room renting for about at an affordable rent to at a market rent, between and of them could cover their basic costs and stay in their homes. Unlike a sale, sharing keeps the home and its equity intact as a reserve for later, including for care.
Of every 100 older homeowners at risk in
Of the at risk: those who cannot cover their basic costs or are barely covering them, as in the first chart. The affordable rent is HUD's Low HOME Rent and the market rent its Fair Market Rent, each divided by the home's bedrooms. See the fine print.
What that could mean each year, how common home sharing is today, and how many older adults are open to it:
Every stateThe figures for each state, side by side
Select a heading to sort, and a row to see that state's figures throughout the page. The five states at the top of the current sort are shown first.
| State | Older homeowners | Share at risk | At risk who could stay by sharing a room | Moves driven by cost, a year | Moves sharing could prevent, a year |
|---|
The first three columns count households today; the last two count moves each year. At risk who could stay: homeowners who cannot cover their basic costs or are barely covering them, whose income a shared room would lift over the line, at an affordable rent to a market rent. Moves sharing could prevent: the moves driven by cost each year, times the share of the at-risk who could stay, at the midpoint of the two rents.
Staying Home in Resources to help you understand your options
Citations, Definitions & SourcesOpen the fine printClose the fine printEvery figure on this page traces to a published source. The full citations, definitions, and source tables are available by clicking Open the Fine Print.
Definitions
Older homeowner. A household whose householder is 62 or older and that owns its home, with or without a mortgage. Households, not people.
Basic costs. The Elder Index budget for the household's state, household size (one person or a couple) and housing situation (owner with a mortgage, owner without one). Households of three or more use the couple budget, which understates their need.
Income. All household cash income in 2025 dollars. Savings and other assets are not counted, so this is a test of income, not of wealth.
Cannot cover basic costs. Income below the basic budget. Barely covering. Income from 1.0 to 1.5 times the basic budget. At risk. The two together. Drawing the upper line at 1.25 or 2.0 times the budget gives or at risk in .
Living alone and widowed. Living alone is household size; widowed is marital status. They overlap, because losing a spouse is often how an older homeowner comes to live alone. Widowed homeowners are of those who cannot cover their basic costs but of older homeowners.
Move driven by cost. A move out of the owned home for which housing cost, foreclosure or eviction is a stated reason. The yearly count is a central estimate within a range, to in .
Could stay. A household of one or two people with a spare bedroom whose income, plus one room's rent, reaches the basic budget (for those who cannot cover their costs) or 1.5 times it (for those barely covering them).
Methodology
Moves and foreclosures are never added. They are estimated separately. A foreclosure is also a move, so adding them would count some households twice.
Moving rates. No single state has enough older movers in the Current Population Survey for a reliable rate, so one set of rates is used for every state, from homeowners 62 and older nationally and in the Pacific states, cross-checked against the American Housing Survey and published Health and Retirement Study research. The split between moving in with family and with someone else comes from the state's Census division where at least 100 survey respondents support it, and from the nation otherwise. For it comes from , respondents, so treat it as approximate.
States. Figures are for each state as a whole, on the state's Elder Index budget. The smallest states rest on a few hundred surveyed households below that budget, so their figures are less precise than the largest states'.
Homelessness. Surveys of households cannot count people who have become homeless, so the figure is the most it could be, 0 to 5% of moves driven by cost, not a measured number.
Selling. For each household that cannot cover its basic costs, the sale price less selling costs and any mortgage pays the yearly gap between income and basic costs, and the years that lasts are compared with remaining life expectancy. Selling costs of 8% of value; a mortgage balance of 39% of value for owners with a mortgage; a less expensive home at 62% of current value; rent at the Elder Index renter budget; remaining life expectancy from CDC life tables, 2023. Cautious and hopeful cases are in the model. The same selling costs and mortgage balance drive the Sharing or Selling comparison in Household Math, which runs them on one household's own budget.
Staying and sharing. Older homeowners who cannot cover their basic costs and have a room to share: a spare bedroom, in a household of one or two. The gap closes when income plus one room's rent reaches the household's Elder Index budget, at an affordable rent or only at a market rent; for those it does not close, a second room is added where the home has one. Nearly closed means the rooms the home has, at a market rent, bring income to at least 75% of the budget, the mirror of the 1.25 times line the model uses for its low case of barely covering.
Selling to move in with someone else. Shown on the family card at a contribution of nothing, and on the not-family card at an affordable rent. The household covers its basic costs other than housing, plus a contribution to the household it joins, tested at three levels: nothing; a room at an affordable rent (HUD's Low HOME Rent for a three-bedroom home, divided by three); and a room at market rent (the Fair Market Rent for a three-bedroom home, divided by three). The gap closes for good for paying nothing, at an affordable rent and at market rent. It is not always a lasting answer. In California's statewide study of homelessness, nearly half of older adults who became homeless had most recently been living in someone else's home, with family or friends. When the move is in with family, the cost moves with it: family caregivers spend about $7,242 a year of their own money on caregiving, about 26% of their income, according to AARP. What taking someone in costs a family is not in any public data, so it is not modeled.
Selling to move into subsidized housing. HUD's 2026 rules. Rent in public housing or with a housing voucher is the greater of of adjusted income and 10% of income (24 CFR 5.628), after the $550 deduction for an older household and medical costs above 10% of income (5.611), with the Elder Index health budget standing in for medical costs. Income limits are HUD's FY2026 limits at 50% of area median income. From January 1, 2027, every housing agency must turn away a household whose savings are above (5.618; HUD Notices PIH 2026-15 and H 2025-07). A home for sale does not count toward that limit; the cash from selling it does. For of these homeowners the sale would leave more than the limit, so the model has them rent at the Elder Index renter budget until the cash is down to it: about years, until around age . For , that takes longer than their expected lifetime. Giving the money to family does not help, because HUD counts anything given away for less than its value in the two years before applying (5.603). Section 202 housing for older adults funded through a Project Rental Assistance Contract is outside the asset limit (5.618(e)); Section 202 housing with Section 8 is not. There the gap closes for good for , against with the limit. The model has no data on savings a household already holds, so it understates how many are over the limit. Waiting lists, which often run for years, and tax credit housing, which has no asset limit but does not set rent by income, are not modeled.
Room rent scenarios. One room is priced at a share of HUD's rent limit for the home's bedroom count, divided by its bedrooms, which is how HUD splits rent in shared housing (24 CFR 982.617). The affordable rent uses the Low HOME Rent, HUD's affordable rent at 50% of area median income (24 CFR 92.252(b)), from the HUD FY2026 HOME Rent Limits, effective June 1, 2026. HomeShare encourages it, and HomeShare's calculators use it. The market rent uses HUD's FY2026 Fair Market Rent for the county and the home's bedroom count (homes above four bedrooms add 15% of the four-bedroom rent per bedroom, as HUD does). The monthly rents shown are averages across at-risk homes with a spare room. Two further cases are in the model: the High HOME Rent, which is capped at the Fair Market Rent (about a month, could stay), and HUD's 50th percentile rent (about , could stay). Moving in with someone else prices the contribution on a three-bedroom home instead, which is why it runs slightly lower.
Sources
Elder Index. Elder Index. (2025). The Elder Index(TM) [Public Dataset]. Boston, MA: Gerontology Institute, University of Massachusetts Boston. Retrieved from ElderIndex.org, 2026-09-18.
Households and income. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 1-year Public Use Microdata Sample, 2022, 2023 and 2024 pooled. Totals match published tables B25007 and B25093 within 2%.
Moves, reasons and destinations. Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 2010 to 2025, via IPUMS CPS, University of Minnesota. American Housing Survey 2023 national public use file.
Rents, income limits and HUD rules. HUD, FY2026 Fair Market Rents, FY2026 50th percentile rents, FY2026 HOME Rent Limits and FY2026 Section 8 income limits, by county. Census 2020 tract-to-PUMA relationship file. HUD, 2026 Inflation-Adjusted Values, effective January 1, 2026. HUD Notices PIH 2026-15 (May 14, 2026) and H 2025-07 (December 17, 2025). 24 CFR 5.603, 5.609, 5.611, 5.618 and 5.628, read September 22, 2026.
Foreclosures. Counted only where a state source exists. For Oregon: Oregon Department of Revenue county survey under HB 4056 (2018 to 2023). County deed-taking was paused through December 31, 2025, so 2024 and 2025 counts are artificially low.
Home sharing today. HomeShare Oregon, A Tradition Remembered: owner-occupied homes with a householder 65 or older in which someone from outside the family lives, American Community Survey 2020 to 2024. For the yearly figure ranged from to between 2018 and 2024.
Interest in sharing. AARP, 2024 Home and Community Preferences Survey. The question asks about living with someone you do not know, so 7% is a floor on interest in home sharing, where people are introduced on compatibility.
Homelessness after living with others. UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, Toward Dignity, from the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, May 2024: 46% of older adults entered homelessness from someone else's home.
Caregiving costs. AARP, 2021 Caregiving Out-of-Pocket Costs Study: family caregivers of all kinds, not only those who took in a relative.
Companion work. Before the Move.
Cite This Paper
HomeShare Oregon. (2026). Staying Home: The Financial Pressures That Move Older Homeowners, and How Home Sharing Can Help Them Stay. https://homeshareoregon.org/research/staying-home/
About HomeShare Oregon
HomeShare Oregon publishes this paper as students of aging, housing, and community infrastructure. We operate one of many possible interventions in the missing middle. We believe the most useful contribution we can make to the larger field is to add a frame and a research agenda, rather than to argue for our particular role within it.
If you are working on related questions, we would like to hear from you. Email the executive director at executivedirector@homeshareoregon.org.