Seriously? Roommates?

Remember the show Golden Girls? Housing experts predict that it’s coming back – for real. What happens when aging boomers run low on cheddar (sorry – too much Breaking Bad – I meant money)? If they are single adults, they will start looking for roommates to lower their living expenses. The theory being that 3 or 4 Social Security checks combined will go a lot further, as will the weekly groceries.

There are already groups set up to help boomers find each other and more are organizing every day. Affordable Living for the Aging reports that about 130,000 senior-partnership households already exist and that number is expected to increase rapidly.

And we’re not talking about adult partners who are shacking up (the forerunner of hooking up). We’re talking about adults with no familial or romantic connection. It’s a pure “shared economy” arrangement where roommates contribute something valuable to the deal. Maybe you own a house but are cash-strapped. The roommate can buy the groceries and help with the utility bills, or drive you to doctor appointments, or whatever, all in exchange for a rent-free roof over their heads. You put 3 or 4 roommates under one roof and you really have some economy of scale.

And it sure beats living in a refrigerator box. When you look at the statistics about how little money some boomers have put away for retirement, it makes you think that homelessness among the aging could grow into a massive scale problem. Roommate exchanges offers a far better prospect than seeing homeless seniors living rough.

By 2030, 1 in 5 Americans will be a senior (over 65). Rather than stacking seniors up like cordwood in warehouse-style housing, the roommate plan could be a bright spot in an otherwise dismal formula for end-of-life housing. Is having one or more roommates the ideal, dream scenario, the arrangement that each of us always dreamed of? Not really, not even close. But it beats a lot of dreadful alternatives that one could imagine.

And think of all the great sit-com potential that could come from it. Everyone loves cranky seniors (spitfires, if you please). It could be like the show Friends, but with old people. You could be Monica and I could be Joey!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.