Home-sharing may be affordable housing solution for elderly residents
LONDON: Home-sharing is set to become the most affordable housing solution for the elderly.
Affordable housing is hard to find, and it can be especially challenging for elderly residents of Davidson County.
Rising costs are making it difficult for the elderly to stay in Nashville, and many end up moving to communities with lower costs of living. This is an issue that Age Well Middle Tennessee wants to address with home-sharing initiatives.
Grace Smith, the executive director for Age Well Middle Tennessee, says it’s important for seniors to be able to live in the communities they helped build.
“I really want to see Nashville do a better job preserving our housing and taking care of older adults who have built our city who are lifelong residents. We need to support them in staying an integral part of our community. And so you know, we know that neighborhoods are being gentrified, and older adults are being pushed further and further away,” Smith said.
Smith says that it’s not just rising housing prices that are the problem, but it’s certainly one of the biggest issues.
“Older adults are struggling because gas prices are going up, the cost of medications are going up, the cost of food is going up,” she said. “Housing, housing values, and the cost of rent has skyrocketed in our area. So if you’re trying to live on a fixed income, it’s becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible to do that.”
To counteract some of the rising costs of living, Age Well is working to encourage home-sharing for elderly homeowners.
“There’s really growing interest in home-sharing, where an older homeowner who has an extra room, maybe they’re an empty nester and they’re living alone but they have an extra room or space in their home that they could rent out. Well it becomes a win-win situation,” said Smith.
With home sharing, seniors can live with other seniors, or choose younger roommates like local grad students who desire affordable housing. However, one challenge that they are running into is that it is hard to get some seniors on board with home-sharing. This is where partnering with Silvernest comes in.
Silvernest is a company that makes it easy for those looking to rent a room to find a roommate. The technological framework they offer has already worked in other cities in the US, and Smith hopes it will work here in the Nashville area.
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“The technology is such an essential part because it helps match people based on the qualities and their lifestyle habits. It also provides some built-in safety, background checks, safe ways to handle payment, lease templates for that shared living arrangement. So we really think that silver nest is an exciting tech partner, and one that will help us bring home-sharing to our area,” Smith said.
Age Well’s home-sharing initiatives are in their beginning stages, but they hope that they will be part of the solution to Nashville’s affordable housing problem.
