Photo from Parsley Ball on Pixabay.
Why shared housing isn’t always better than aging solo.
Recently, the New York Times published an article about the “golden girls” lifestyle as a model for elder housing. Earlier Chip Conley posted in LinkedIn, ” The Coming Explosion of “Golden Girls Housing.” I’ve known women who said they’d love to have a housing situation like the Golden Girls.
“Golden Girls” was a TV show that ran for seven years, ending when one of the lead actors decided to opt out. The concept has become iconic: Golden Girls is a synonym for women over 50 sharing a home as roommates.
Home-sharing works very well for some people. But is it realistic to plan for a Golden Girls lifestyle…especially if you’re single and/or happily living alone?
First and foremost: the Golden Girls weren’t lifelong singles. Three were widowed, and one was divorced. They were accustomed to sharing a home with a spouse and possibly children.
That demographic alone makes them very different from the increasing numbers of people who are single and/or live alone.
Can people who have long preferred living alone realistically expect to enjoy sharing a house simply because they’re older?
I have not seen research on this specific topic: how do people transition from living solo to living with others?
However, the Mather Institute reports a German article finding that older couples prefer to live apart rather than inhabit shared space. It seems likely that if even romantic couples prefer to live apart as they age, friends would hold even stronger preferences
The Golden Girls were not very old. They were young and active.
When the show started, three of the four characters were in their early fifties. They held jobs, had no chronic medical conditions, easily got around, and lived comfortably. They had spent significant portions of their adult lives learning to live with others, as wives and sometimes mothers.
I’ve seen people present the Golden Girls model as a solution to loneliness. But living alone doesn’t mean you have to be lonely.
A Forbes article quotes Maria Claver, director of California State University Long Beach’s Gerontology program. She cites the statistics correlating loneliness with death and suggests that living alone “contributes” to the “loneliness epidemic.”
That article was written seven years ago, so her position may have changed. However, an awful lot of people live alone and love it.
Many people confuse solitude with loneliness. Studies of people living alone tend to omit the question: Do you want to live alone? Or are you forced to live alone when you’d rather be with others? I suspect those who enjoy living alone don’t feel they’re part of the “loneliness epidemic.” According to Bella DePaulo, happily single people express a need for “alone time.” They look forward to spending long periods of time completely alone.
According to Forbes, Claver says that the Golden Girls benefited from helping each other when they went through medical crises. People who choose to live alone voluntarily soon learn how to develop resources to help themselves through these temporary crises. Anyway, living with others won’t guarantee they’ll be there to help like the Golden Girls.
Like most TV shows, the Golden Girls leaves out the hard parts.
Roommates don’t always find instant compatibility. People have widely different tolerances for cleanliness, noise, and privacy. As a television show, Blanche’s cast of rotating boyfriends was funny; in real life, roommates would be concerned about safety and privacy.
And in real life, you need a good lawyer behind any shared housing situation, for both landlord and tenant. You don’t want to live with someone who’s become difficult and you don’t want to be out on the street because the landlord had a change of heart…or a bad day.
Choose your tradeoffs.
Shared housing works remarkably well for some people. They’re willing to do the work, get legal and financial advice, and make compromises.
People who choose to live alone make different tradeoffs. A studio apartment may seem tight if you’ve always lived alone in a big house, but it may be more comfortable to have those cramped quarters all to yourself.
Happiness requires a location where you have access to resources like public transit, taxis, takeout food, health care, and grocery delivery. People are genuinely different: as I write in my book on moving, sometimes the grass really is greener. Some places are more conducive to friends and your preferred lifestyle..
The Golden Girls was a popular TV show. That’s all it was. Shared housing can be wonderful. But it’s still shared housing—not a sitcom.
Suggesting that shared housing will be like the Golden Girls is about as real as a fairy tale, or as real as believing that Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City (another popular show) could buy a closet full of designer shoes on a newswriter’s salary. It doesn’t compute.
