Seniors Renting Out Empty Rooms : Philadelphia Elderly Turn to Home-Sharing Program

PHILADELPHIA — Home-sharing may not be for everyone, but for a growing number of elderly people around Philadelphia it is working out just fine.

Take Doris Levine, for instance. She had extra space in her three-bedroom row house in west Philadelphia and wanted to rent out a bedroom.

“I was here by myself and I thought I could at least have a little company,” said Levine, 81, who found a tenant through a program that helps bring together elderly and young people in home-sharing arrangements.

Through Philadelphia Match, a 5-year-old program sponsored by the National Shared Housing Resource Center, Levine found a tenant, a younger woman who has now lived in her home for a year.

“We get along very good,” Levine said.

Younger People

Dorothy Jarvis, 73, who has turned to Philadelphia Match three times, also likes having a younger person in the house. Her current tenant is a man in his 30s.

“I can’t see two old people doing too much for each other if something were to happen,” she said.

She prefers Philadelphia Match to advertising in a newspaper.

Mary Gildea, spokeswoman for the national center, which is headquartered here and gives advice to shared housing programs nationwide, said, “We screen. That’s what we offer. For the older Philadelphian, that’s what’s important.”

Philadelphia Match, one of about 200 such programs nationwide, expects to make more than 120 matches for the year ending June 30, Gildea said. Since the program began, about 725 people have been served.

A match might put an elderly person and younger person together in a mansion in the city’s Chestnut Hill section or in a row house in north Philadelphia, with tenants paying an average rent of $150 to $200 per month.

‘Will Be Problems’

“When people come to us, we are up front with them,” Gildea said. “It means that you’re giving up some privacy, that in fact there will be problems.”

In a typical arrangement, they will share a kitchen, dining room and other areas but will have separate bedrooms and sometimes separate bathrooms.

To find a possible match, staff members interview homeowners and prospective tenants on preferences, needs and interests.

Will they consider living with somebody who has pets? Someone who smokes? How do they feel about guests staying overnight?

When asked why they want to share their homes, older people often respond, “I could use additional income,” Gildea said.

Other reasons are companionship, security and help around the house.

An older person with vacant space can barter it for services, such as taking out the garbage or cooking or cleaning, Gildea said.

Others Targeted

Until 1985, she said, Philadelphia Match required that one person in the match be at least 60 years old. Serving the elderly remains the program’s priority, but the operation in the last year has targeted others, including single parents, the disabled and displaced homemakers. In addition, the group is looking at how to bring the homeless into the program.

The age restriction is common in programs nationwide that try to match elderly and young people in housing, Gildea said.

The average match lasts a year, but Gildea said that does not give a true indication of a program’s success because for some people a match arrangement is only needed for a short period.

“Home-sharing is not for everyone,” Gildea said.

The shared-housing idea evolved in response to the placement in nursing homes of many elderly people who did not need to be institutionalized.

Many Students

One drawback, Gildea said, is that a large portion of the prospective tenants are students, who come and go. At the same time, some homeowners like the idea of trying out the system with a student because they know the arrangement will be only temporary.

Shared housing, at least through Philadelphia Match, is not the answer for someone who needs an apartment next week, however. Because of reference checks and other screening, the average match takes four to six weeks.

When the match is proposed, the people get together for a meeting. If that goes well, another meeting is scheduled to discuss living habits, “from how much do you talk on the phone to how are you about picking up your socks,” Gildea said. Some agreements on such matters may be included in a signed statement.

Two-Week Trial

After all that, the agency recommends a two-week trial and recommends that the tenant have a place to go if the trial doesn’t work out.

Besides a $5 application fee, the cost to homeowner and tenant in a successful match is $20 apiece. That, she said, supplies only a small part of the $82,000 annual budget for the agency, which runs on a mix of public and private money.

With 120 to 125 matches a year, that works out to about $650 per case. Some, she said, are skeptical of the cost-effectiveness of the program.

“Our contention is, we’re providing a unit of housing,” she said. “There’s no one else in Philadelphia who provides a unit of housing for the cost we’re talking about.”