AARP Hearing Center
Could You Really Live Like the ‘Golden Girls’?
A group of older women gathered in New Mexico to explore whether shared housing could be an alternative to aging alone. The answer, they found, is complicated
A recent ‘Golden Girls’ weekend workshop drew women to a workshop in New Mexico where they explored the pros and cons of home sharing. Participants included (from left) Michelle Harper, 57, Ariel Morvan, 59, and Martha Morrill, 67.
Jesse Rieser
Key takeaways
- A New Mexico workshop helped older women explore whether shared housing could offer both community and greater financial security as they age.
- Participants saw potential benefits in companionship and affordability, but raised concerns about privacy, caregiving, household responsibilities and compatibility.
- AARP advocates for laws that support home sharing, which can generate supplemental income for homeowners and be more affordable than living alone.
LAMY, NEW MEXICO — “What do you want to feel when you wake up in your community?” asks Elizabeth White, standing among 10 other older women seated in a circle at a retreat center near Santa Fe.
“Peace.”
“Comfort.”
“Positive vibes.”
White, 72, an author and cohousing expert, is facilitating a discussion about the pros and cons of shared housing with this group of women who’ve signed up for a three-day “Golden Girls” weekend.
The spring retreat was held at a 2,600-acre ranch in New Mexico, surrounded by a windswept, cacti-studded desert landscape. The property is run by Modern Elder Academy, or MEA, an organization founded by Chip Conley, 65, an entrepreneur and author of Learning to Love Midlife, who describes MEA as a “midlife wisdom school.” It offers workshops on topics such as navigating transitions and cultivating purpose at its Santa Fe–area and Baja California campuses.
“Golden Girls,” of course, refers to the NBC sitcom that ran from 1985 to 1992 and centered on four older women sharing a Miami home, lots of laughter and quite a bit of cheesecake. Not everyone loves the analogy — one attendee admitted, “I don’t necessarily have a positive remembrance of that show” — but for many people, it’s still a useful shorthand for “women sharing a home.”
Left, a classroom discussion at MEA's Golden Girls workshop. Right, Chip Conley discusses the itinerary.
Jesse Rieser
This MEA weekend workshop — there have been four since January, with another planned for November — is meant to help participants test whether communal living could be realistic for them. For the workshop’s purposes, that could mean sharing a house with unrelated people or living in a community of small homes built around shared space.
The goal is to determine whether anyone wants to take the leap from “Sounds nice” to “Let’s do this thing.”
Talk naturally steers toward the challenges. What if someone gets sick? What will the neighbors think? How do you manage the housekeeping? Could guests visit? What if a housemate turns out to be difficult to live with? Is there an easy way to leave if it doesn’t work out? And after weighing all those difficult questions, would they want to give shared living a try?
AARP research suggests that many older adults are open to shared housing, particularly with people they know. In a 2024 survey of 3,000 U.S. adults, 57 percent of women age 50 and older said they would consider living with a friend as they age, and just 6 percent would consider living with a stranger; men reported similar views. Relatedly, a July 2026 AARP survey of 1,017 U.S. adults found that about 1 in 4 Americans age 50 and older would consider renting part of their home to a friend or another nonfamily member. (The percentages were similar for women and men.)
Conley explains that he has focused these workshops on women because he has found that they are more likely to have seriously discussed the idea. They “immediately go to this place of saying, ‘I’ve been talking about this for years with my girlfriends from college or my workmates,’ ” he says. “You don’t see guys talking with their friends, ‘What if someday we can live together?’ You just don’t.” (MEA has decided to open up the November workshop to any interested men, however.)
Conley also points out that more older women than men live alone: Thirty-one percent of women age 65 and older were living alone in 2023, compared with 19 percent of men — although the percentage of women living solo has dropped since 1990, when it reached a high of 38 percent — according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
Living alone, of course, is not the same as being lonely; plenty of people cherish their solitude. Still, the country is facing an epidemic of loneliness, which is associated with increased risk of a range of health issues, from high blood pressure to dementia. AARP’s Survey on Loneliness and Social Connections, released in December, found that 37 percent of women 45 and older report being lonely.
What shared living would really mean
The small group includes women from around the country, from Washington, D.C., to Southern California. Most are in their late 50s through early 70s and single — divorced, widowed or never married. Some found the workshop while searching online for information about shared housing; others heard about it through Conley’s blog or word of mouth. The retreat costs $1,500, though attendees can apply for partial scholarships.
Among them are Michelle Harper, 57, an education professor who’s thinking about creating a multigenerational household; Ariel Morvan, 59, a life coach in Arizona; and Martha Morrill, 67, a never-married artist who signed up at the last minute because, as she puts it, she was “at a crossroads.”
For the past several years, Morrill’s been living with or house-sitting for various friends in California, Texas and Colorado. “I’ve just been floating,” she says, adding, “I’m exhausted, I’m financially depleted and ready to find my place, my nest.”
She’s wondering whether that nest might be shared — and not only because it would be more affordable. She had heart surgery a few years ago and is conscious of the benefits of, as she puts it, “having someone around just to check on you if you didn’t get up out of bed in the morning…. You just never know.”
Discussions — which are interspersed with yoga, mindfulness sessions and walks through the desert — are held in a sun-drenched classroom. Everyone sits in a circle of chairs, while White or Conley sometimes stands at an easel, jotting ideas on a large pad of paper.
It all gets deeply personal, including frank, sometimes tearful talk about loss, family problems and illness — all factors in how the women are imagining their futures — plus the challenges that come with sharing a home with people they might not know well.
Participants Jodi Brown (left), Martha Morrill (right) and Verna Avery Brown (far right) chat with facilitator Elizabeth White (standing) after breakfast.
Jesse Rieser
“We are women who’ve lived alone for a long time,” says White, who lives in Washington, D.C., and is the author of 55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal: Your Guide to a Better Life. “When we’re thinking about living in a space where there are other people, given who we are — our patterns, our opinions, our views — is that something we’re ready for?”
She asks everyone to write down their hopes and fears about shared living in small notebooks placed at each seat, then to share them with the group.
Verna Avery-Brown, 73, an executive producer of a radio show from Washington, D.C., and mother of four adult sons, is clear about what she doesn’t want: “I don’t want anybody depending on me. I had years of ‘What’s for dinner, Mom?’ If I want to go out alone and get something to eat for my dinner, I want that to be OK.”
Other women worry about the interpersonal complications. “How do you live in a collective community without carrying everyone’s weight?” Harper asks.
Harper says she’s exploring the idea of intergenerational shared housing, maybe with her daughter and other people she’s close to, like former students, to have support and affordability: “I’m looking to make sure that I can take care of myself while I take care of them.”
Everyone needs to accept that communal living requires compromise, says Jewel D. Pearson, 59, who’s spent more than 10 years living in her self-designed tiny house north of Charlotte, North Carolina, and who wants to build a tiny-house community for older women. “You can’t have the level of standards and perfection and all the things that you expected in your solo home,” she says to the group. “As you’re downsizing your stuff, you also have to start downsizing some of your ideals.”
Workshop participants Debra Meyer, Eve Blossom and Jodi Brown
Jesse Rieser
A broader trend
Beyond the MEA retreat, interest in women-centered shared housing is visible in Reddit threads, Facebook groups and housemate-matching services.
In Facebook groups such as Golden Girl Gang Housing Community, which has more than 40,000 members, and Women’s Co-housing Initiative, with 22,000 members, women post about looking for housemates, seeking inexpensive rooms in group homes or exploring tiny-house communities.
The comments range widely. In one “Golden Girls” Facebook group, a recent post was from a woman seeking housemates who’d consider “boutique co-living” in North Carolina in an “elegant home … for mature independent women who want comfort, companionship and serenity,” starting at $1,300 a month.
Heather Matthews, 52, an IT project manager and entrepreneur in Scarborough, Maine, and a member of a few of the Golden Girl-themed Facebook groups, is getting ready to launch her own housemate-finding site for women over 50, GoldenCircleLiving.com. She hopes it will make it easier for compatible women to find one another. Separated from her husband, Matthews is considering eventually sharing her house, which has a detached in-law suite, with other older women, “like the Golden Girls,” she says. “They had good times and bad times, but they were there for each other at the end of the day, you know?”
More structured programs offer another route for home or housemate seekers. The National Shared Housing Resource Center (NSHRC) offers information on a range of nonprofit home-sharing programs around the country. They include HomeShare Oregon, a home sharers’ matching site whose goal, according to its website, is to make home sharing “a first instinct, not a last resort.”
Programs like these facilitate the process, helping with background checks, clarifying expectations around chores and guests, and an exit plan if the arrangement doesn’t work.
HomeShare Vermont’s process includes multiple background checks and at least three reference checks for both hosts and guests (as they call them), 90-minute interviews with everyone involved and a two-week trial match. ”That’s a good amount of time to figure out what the daily life would look like,” says executive director Connor Timmons.
He notes applicants are of all ages, but many of the matches involve older hosts and comparably younger guests; the average ages are 71 and 42, respectively, with the guests sometimes offering a service, like pet sitting or gardening, in exchange for lower rent (which can’t go above $650 a month).
If you’re interested in finding your own housemate without an organization’s assistance, Timmons stresses the importance of creating a written agreement that establishes the house’s rules, as well as fully vetting anyone you’re considering living with. (HomeShare Vermont offers a DIY guide to home sharing. “Anything that’s helping people share more effectively is good,” he says.)
The money question
Companionship is only part of the appeal. Nearly every woman interviewed for this story who was interested in home sharing also mentioned the financial benefits. More than half of women 50-plus fear their money won’t sustain them in retirement, according to a 2025 survey that was part of She’s the Difference, AARP’s research series gauging the perspectives of older women.
Housing costs add another incentive. Many available homes have multiple bedrooms and are too large for many buyers’ needs, which can also make them difficult to sell and maintain, says Samar Jha, AARP’s government affairs director who handles housing issues. Home sharing, he notes, can allow homeowners to make better use of their homes, generate supplemental income and create more affordable housing options.
Ariel Morvan tours a home bought and renovated by MEA. Women can rent a room in the house to test-drive home sharing.
Jesse Rieser
And yet, Jha adds, many communities’ regulations don’t allow homeowners to rent out a room long-term to someone who’s unrelated or have limits on the number of housemates. (AARP supports legal changes that would make shared housing more attainable.)
Removing some of those restrictions “is definitely going to help in increasing the housing supply for affordable housing,” Jha says, pointing to states that have loosened their laws on home sharing, including Washington and Oregon. Colorado also passed, in 2024, what many call a “Golden Girls” law that removes local caps on the number of unrelated people who can live together in a single home. “I’m not saying this can solve the loneliness crisis,” he adds, “but it can definitely help.”
The change in Colorado was good news to workshop participant Debra Meyer, 68, who lives in Denver. Divorced and living in a small condo, she told the group that she’s planning to secure a shared house in the area for herself and other “active and growth-oriented” single women 60 and older — possibly with the help of investors. She estimates the rent would be well below Denver’s average of $2,000 per month for a one-bedroom apartment.
It just makes sense financially, Meyer tells the group. She adds later that others are likely to see it the same way, particularly if housing and other prices continue to rise: “Before long, people are going to start looking at their IRA accounts … and saying, ‘OK, I am going to have to do something different.’ ”
Making it real
While Conley leads workshops on shared housing, he’s also testing the model in rental homes near MEA. The organization has bought and renovated two homes for women to rent as they try out the arrangement, including a three-bedroom bungalow and a five-bedroom house in the surrounding desert.
Three women who met at the first workshop in January (they termed their group the Bettys, in honor of the late Golden Girls costar Betty White) are spending a month together in the three-bedroom home this summer; they are, Conley says, “sort of our guinea pigs.”
From left: Verna Avery Brown, Eve Blossom and Martha Morrill say their farewells after the three-day workshop.
Jesse Rieser
Next year, he’s beginning construction on what he’s calling “tiny homes with parallel living”: a structure that has a large common area with six or eight self-sufficient units — like tiny houses — attached to it, on the MEA ranch. He draws the layout on one of the large pads of paper in the classroom. It’s a big rectangle surrounded by a ring of eight smaller rectangles.
“If you really don’t want to interact with the people, you’ve got your little space there,” he says, pointing at one of the small rectangles.
The idea sparks some interest, but most of the women at the workshop seem more focused on broader discussions about shared housing than an immediate move. When White polls the group, asking them to characterize their readiness for the lifestyle, three say they’re ready (Meyer, who’s planning a group house in Denver; Harper, who’s considering a multigenerational shared home; and Pearson, who hopes to build a tiny house community for older women). Four women say they’re not ready yet; three say they don’t know.
In Meyer’s experience, that gap between interest and action is real. She says she’s seen that hesitation beyond the workshop too. “Friends have said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m interested in that.’ And then when I came back around and said, ‘OK, now I’m serious about it. Could we talk about it?’ they back out really quickly. I think people think it sounds fun, but it’s such a life change.... You’re giving up one way of living.”
Some of the women are taking baby steps toward a more communal setup, however.
“I’m not ready for shared housing today,” says Morvan, who’s in transition and looking to make a move within the next year. A few months after the workshop, she says she’s now “thinking about ways to live that allow for both privacy and a richer sense of community,” such as a small, multi-home development that has shared common spaces and gardens.
Avery-Brown says her oldest son and his wife have told her that they’d like to buy a new home with an in-law suite so she and her daughter-in-law’s mother can both come live with them. She is pleased but notes that she’d need her own space (she’s “absolutely not sharing a room with anybody”).
And Morrill has found a different kind of nest too. Soon after she returned from New Mexico, a friend who owns a ranch near Dallas invited her to spend a few months — or longer, if she wishes — living on her property. Morrill lives in a small cottage close to the main house and, in exchange, helps tend the garden and pitch in with other tasks while focusing on her art.
“It’s independent living, yet people are around if you need or want,” she says, noting that her friend comes by after feeding the horses every morning and evening to chat, and they make dinner together a few times a week.
“Who knows what the future holds,” she adds, “but for now, it’s the best of both worlds.”
A view of the Sandia Mountains from Modern Elders Academy's Santa Fe campus.
Jesse Rieser
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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