When Cynthia Akins-Owens learned last April that her landlord of 12 years was hiking her $1,200 monthly rent by $464 on her Tampa, Fla., apartment, she knew she couldn’t afford it.
“I was afraid I would have to stay with a relative and lose my independence,” said Akins-Owens, 75.
Then the former school bus attendant heard about New Life Village, an intergenerational community in Tampa that offers affordable housing to older adults. In exchange, they help support families trying to create a permanent home for children impacted by foster care or other trauma.
Amid a severe nationwide affordable housing shortage, some older adults are finding that intergenerational, “intentional communities” like New Life Village offer cheaper and stable housing along with a sense of purpose and belonging.
Akins-Owens is now settled in a spacious two-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom townhouse with a patio. Her front porch provides daily interaction with neighbors and children, and her Social Security check covers the $985 rent.
“I can see myself growing old here,” she says.
Jan Mutchler, director of the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston, summarizes the appeal:
“It’s one thing to say, ‘I’m going to move to a suburb because I can afford it.’ But you’re only finding an affordable place,” she says. “It’s another to have to leave your neighborhood and community but move to a place that is intentionally set up to be supportive.”
Interest in creative affordable housing models
Intentional, intergenerational communities focus on a common goal, such as helping to support foster or adoptive parents or injured veterans or young adults with disabilities such as autism. The housing model is gaining ground. Communities with a focus on foster care kids exist in Massachusetts, Oregon (three locations, with others under discussion), Illinois, and Florida. One is planned for Boston.
Genesis, in Washington, D.C., is an apartment building that houses young mothers who have aged out of foster care and low-income seniors who help them out. In New Orleans, Bastion supports injured veterans and their families who live alongside military and civilian volunteers.
Other older adults are opting for co-housing, where residents own their home along with common property such as a clubhouse; they usually share some meals and activities. According to The Cohousing Association of America, there are 180 co-housing communities of mixed ages in the US; more than 30 are for seniors only.
The communities are springing up to meet a growing need.
“Older adults face increasing challenges securing housing that is affordable, meets their physical needs and is well-connected to community supports and services,” says Jennifer Molinsky, project director at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS).
According to the Harvard center’s America’s Rental Housing 2024 report, in 2022, 28% of renter households with lower incomes were headed by someone age 65 or older.
A rent.com study found that the U.S. median monthly rent increased from $1,614 in March, 2020, to $2,038 in July, 2023, a 26% leap in three years. As of December 2023, it was down to $1,967. While rents are now decreasing, they are still higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Less cash, more caring with intentional communities
Vickie Miles, 62, worries about housing costs. Two years ago, she had to sell the Columbia, Md., townhouse where she had raised four children when she needed a wheelchair. In her current one-bedroom Columbia apartment, she pays $1,650 a month; her Social Security disability check covers $1,533.
“I have thought about leaving the county because I draw down from my savings every month and I can’t sustain this,” she says. “But I want to stay here.”
She has her eye on Patuxent Commons, an intergenerational community in Columbia. Slated to break ground this summer, there will be neurodiverse young adults with autism and other neurodevelopmental and intellectual disabilities, and individuals, older adults and families.
Of the 76 rental units, 25 percent will be reserved for people with disabilities. Ten percent of all units will be market rate. Depending on their income, seniors at Patuxent Commons are projected to pay $1,293 or $1,658 for one bedroom and $1,547 or $1,785 for two. (The median rent for Columbia, Maryland, is $1,738 for a one bedroom and $2,000 for two.)
“It’s a unique concept,” says executive director Melissa Rosenberg of the Autism Society of Maryland. “We isolate our seniors, people with disabilities and those who need affordable housing. This model brings them together.”
Miles agrees.
“It appeals to me to live with young people who have autism as well as others,” she says. “I feel like I have a lot to give.”
Plans are underway to replicate the model in Columbus, Ohio, and Chapel Hill, N.C.
Housing that is affordable and welcoming
Charles Durrett, 68, an architect and co-founder of the US co-housing movement, has designed 61 co-housing communities in the US and Canada. Living in Nevada City Cohousing in California, he saves money by buying items such as laundry detergent in bulk with other residents, cooking communally when he wants and reducing energy costs because of shared walls with neighbors.
Along with landscaping costs, residents divvy up some other bills: Thirty-four houses share a $235 monthly total tab for internet access versus $95 a month each house would have had to pay if they didn’t share.
Durrett estimates that he saves at least $1,700 a month by living communally and believes co-housing can save one-third or more than a single family house.
But money is far from the only reason Durrett has lived in two co-housing communities in California, as well as in Denmark where the co-housing model was born. He has seen residents turn into family, spending time together and helping one another out.
Last year, Durrett’s 80-year-old neighbor returned from the hospital 25 pounds lighter than he needed to be. Residents made him two meals a day for the next six months.
New Life Village resident Ruthie Neal, 84, has become devoted to a couple and their three sibling sons adopted from the foster care system.
Until last May, Neal was living in a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment that cost $2,100 a month. A $1,000 rent increase sent her scrambling for more affordable housing. Had she stayed in her old apartment, she would have been left with just $1,200 a month for everything else.
“That would have been no life,” says Neal, who is a widow.
Today she calls home a two bedroom, two and a half bathroom townhouse. Her appliances were just updated and she has her own porch and patio. The price tag? $998 a month.
“I am so relieved,” says Neal. “I don’t know where else I could have found a place like this for this kind of money. Now I don’t have to struggle financially.”
And then there’s the kid factor. “All the children in the neighborhood know who Miss Ruthie is,” she says. “I talk to them, I play with them. They trust me and I love them. This place is beautiful!”