From strangers to housemates: Why some Canadian seniors are turning to the ‘Golden Girls’ model

The tiny cat is roundly adored by Swartz and the three other women who share this rental home on a quiet London cul-de-sac: Christine Dafoe, Jo-Anne Muchan and Holly, who declined to use her surname for privacy reasons.

Asked who is responsible for the unenviable task of scooping out the litter, there’s no hesitation. They all swiftly point at Holly, who brought Alina into the home, and declare: “Mommy.” It’s a helpful point of clarity for a group of housemates who just months earlier were strangers.

Dividing chores in a way that is acceptable to all four women is among myriad issues they’ve worked out in an extensive housemate agreement, which governs everything from bill payments, to groceries, to what type of decor they prefer in common areas. The agreement took effect last spring, after the women connected through an online site that facilitates home-sharing for seniors in Ontario.

Each of the women, who range in age from 60 to 74, was looking to save money or avoid the isolation of living alone.

“Sometimes we have a meal together, which is nice — and if you cook the meal, the other people clean up, which I really like,” Muchan says.

Swartz lauds their built-in support network: “I had an episode … where I became quite ill quite quickly,” she says. “[My housemates] threw themselves into action to help me — it was just amazing, and it just reinforced to me how important it is to have this kind of relationship with people in life, because it’s scary when you’re on your own.”

Examples of this type of shared-living arrangement, known as the “Golden Girls” model, have been popping up across the country in recent years — and the format could become an increasingly significant part of Canada’s housing mix in the days ahead, experts say, as the population ages and housing prices soar.

By 2036, nearly a quarter of Canadians are expected to be 65 or older. Many do not have children to support them in their senior years, and with tens of thousands of people on waiting lists for long-term care homes, there are urgent questions around how the country will accommodate this growing cohort.

Proponents of the Golden Girls model — named after the eponymous sitcom, which follows the lives of four older women living together in Miami — point to its potential for cost savings, shared care and support networks, and resource conservation by reducing the number of people living alone in large, single-family homes.

Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing (NIA), described the Golden Girls model as a “missing middle” option for older adults who might no longer be able to manage or afford a large home on their own, but do not yet require nursing care.

“I think there’s going to be a lot more of this happening over time.”

An antidote to loneliness

Loneliness can be a killer. But despite the risk of winding up alone, the desire to avoid institutional settings is so strong that a 2023 survey by the NIA found almost nine in 10 Canadians aged 50 and older currently living in their own homes wanted to age in place.

According to the survey, 57 per cent of all Canadians aged 50 and older experienced loneliness. And that can have direct health implications: Studies have shown that the absence of a supportive social network increases the risk of dementia and cognitive decline by 60 per cent, while “socially integrated lifestyles” provide better protection against such outcomes.

The Golden Girls model offers one potential antidote: in-home companionship. Shared housing, whether through a rental or co-ownership agreement, presents an alternative to living alone during the “in-between” phase preceding long-term care.

In the London case, each of the four women sought a shared home for different reasons. Dafoe had recently separated from her husband and was facing financial pressures, while Swartz was looking for more social interaction outside of work.

The site where they all met, called Senior Women Living Together (SWLT), works to connect Ontarians in the 55+ age bracket looking to share accommodations. Aiming to ease the process of finding a compatible group, SWLT allows users to filter for those with common interests, form online chat groups, and arrange in-person meetups.

“[The website] felt safer than just trying to answer ads for people to share things,” Swartz said.

While it took a few months for her group to formally get together, she added, from then on, “it seemed like it just fell into place.”

The Port Perry Golden Girls put co-living in the headlines

From her waterfront house on Lake Scugog, Martha Casson feels like she “could reach a ladle into the lake.” It is an idyllic spot to spend her retirement, but just a few years ago, she was part of the famous foursome known as the Port Perry Golden Girls.

Their story of battling municipal zoning restrictions in the township of Scugog to jointly purchase a home sparked a media frenzy in 2019, with headlines extolling how they “put co-living on the map.” Six years on, the women are no longer living together, but their case has contributed to a broader discussion of the potential benefits and pitfalls.

Three of the four former housemates, including Casson, have since sold their stakes of the shared home to a new group of senior women. They moved out for various reasons, from finances to health, but Casson remembers her time there fondly.

“In the morning, two or three people would get up and have coffee together and chat, and we’d chat at the dinner table in the evening … We also spent time just having a cup of coffee on the porch,” she said. “We had a beautiful wraparound porch.”

The Port Perry case first emerged more than a decade ago, when the four women found themselves in a dispute with the township of Scugog over plans to co-purchase a home. Their fight to live together ultimately inspired a 2019 push for new provincial legislation.

“We all owned our own homes, we all lived alone, and we all took a look at our finances and thought, this probably won’t last me out,” Casson said of their initial desire to co-own a home. “One of the biggest factors [was], how can I live my best life for the least amount of money, with the most amount of freedom?”

But when they began looking at possible sites, the township of Scugog was not receptive, she said, as one municipal consultant suggested that four unrelated seniors living together would constitute a “retirement home.” Complicating matters further, a proposed bylaw amendment would have introduced a special zoning category of “communal dwelling,” and it was unclear what properties would eventually fall under that definition.

Casson decided to consult the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and following her inquiries, the agency warned Scugog in a 2014 letter to consider whether any of its policy choices would “limit the housing options for older residents.” The township subsequently withdrew the relevant amendment, and Casson’s group swiftly moved forward.

Each of the four women bought one-quarter of a home in downtown Port Perry, which they expanded and renovated with features such as wider doorways, an elevator, and extra space for caregivers. They signed a comprehensive legal agreement that governed “everything from sharing powers of attorney, to voting someone off the island,” Casson said.

Their long journey to living together was ultimately worthwhile, creating a “family kind of environment” in more ways than one, she added: “My joke used to be that there were four women and five opinions.”

Navigating the thornier parts of co-living

In such a setting, challenges can arise over just about everything, from assigning household chores, to dividing finances, to fundamental personality clashes. Indeed, the blissful life portrayed on television by the characters of Rose, Blanche, Dorothy and Sophia does not always match reality.

Pat Dunn, who lives in a Peterborough home with two other women, launched SWLT, the site where the London foursome met, after losing her own husband to a massive heart attack in 2014. She then found herself adrift, unable to afford conventional housing options, which sparked her interest in the Golden Girls model.

Dunn estimates that around half of such arrangements fail, often because prospective housemates do not spend enough time getting to know each other before they jump in: “They’re excited, they seem to get along, they like each other — and a month later, they can’t stand each other.”

For that reason, she encourages new groups to draw up a housemate agreement, where they can decide on everything from who cooks dinner and when guests are allowed in the home, to more complex issues around aging together, such as what to do if one resident becomes debilitated.

“The process of doing that together, of co-creating that, you learn about the other person … You get to see what kinds of things stress them out, whether they can communicate in a way that you can understand,” Dunn said.

Even for seniors with compatible personalities, the Golden Girls model is not a cure-all. Mark Rosenberg, a geography professor at Queen’s University with expertise in aging and population studies, noted that co-ownership in particular might be out of reach for people with fewer financial resources.

There’s also the issue of scalability: The shared housing model alone is unlikely to generate enough spaces for older adults during the crucial “in-between” phase of life, he said.

Other options span the gamut from improving in-home care, to bolstering services within naturally occurring retirement communities, known as NORCs. In addition, Rosenberg says provincial governments should work on expanding the available spaces in larger facilities that offer a continuum of care — from apartments with communal social spaces for seniors in good health, to units with round-the-clock nursing support.

“Those kinds of alternatives are probably what we need more, and the real challenge is, how do we make them accessible, particularly to people who don’t have the incomes that the private sector demands,” he said.

The Golden Girls co-purchasing model — as distinct from co-renting — is also hindered by the fact that it has not yet been widely adopted. The absence of clear and well-understood guidelines on how such agreements work, including how to sell individual shares of a property, could make buyers and lenders wary, experts say.

“People want certainty when they’re investing in something … If this model can be more established and standardized, it has the potential to really multiply the housing units available to Canadians,” said lawyer Lindsey Park, a former Durham MPP who became an advocate for the co-ownership model after meeting Casson’s group.

In 2019, Park introduced the Golden Girls Act, which would have amended Ontario’s Planning Act to explicitly state that unrelated seniors are allowed to live together; such arrangements were already permitted under the existing legislation, but in light of the Scugog dispute, Park wanted to spell it out to avoid any future local zoning obstacles.

“The point of [the Act] was really to start the discussion, like how is this even a topic in Ontario that municipalities are getting in the way of seniors trying to live together?” Park said. “When you say it that way to the common person … it makes absolutely no sense.”

After passing the second reading stage in 2019 with broad all-party support, however, the bill was dropped as the housing ministry opted instead to raise awareness of the Golden Girls model through a provincial guide titled “Co-owning a home,” which featured on its cover the Port Perry foursome. The following year, Alberta moved ahead with its own “Golden Girls Amendments,” prohibiting the passage of land-use bylaws that would prevent unrelated seniors from living together.

“This type of innovative housing solution, from my perspective, should be encouraged … particularly at a time when there’s a great need for affordable housing options for seniors,” Park said.

According to SWLT’s Dunn, several hundred members are currently active on her website — but this is merely the “tip of the iceberg.” Without solutions to the broader affordable-housing crisis, she acknowledges that her site “is a Band-Aid.”

“The problems are not getting fixed by what we’re doing; we just went around them.”

The plan to live together ‘is long term’

Swartz and her housemates in London maintain that the key to making their life together work is open communication.

“If something comes up, then you address it, and I think the honesty, being up front about everything, goes a long way,” Holly said.

To anyone considering a similar arrangement, Swartz advised: “Go into it with an open mind, and don’t expect it to work out with the first people you talk to … just be aware of what you really need and don’t compromise that, but be willing to negotiate on the issues that aren’t as important.”

She and her three housemates are just starting their life together. They will have to navigate a unique set of issues in the months and years ahead, from potential health challenges to financial strains. But while the future is uncertain, they are taking things day by day.

“The plan [to live together] is long term, but we’ll see,” Dafoe said. “It’s still early.”

Mobility issues may ultimately be the deciding factor, Muchan added, as the home is not fully equipped to meet the evolving needs of aging tenants.

“I’m 73, I can still do stairs,” she said, “but I don’t know for how much longer.”