Solo but Not Alone: Co-Living for Women After 50

Published August 28, 2024

What's your ideal living situation as you grow older? What are some of the ways you build community? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

There's something liberating about aging. I've found that the older I get, the more comfortable I am in my skin and the less I care about what others think. But there's an aspect of aging that bothers me: the idea of moving through my most frail years alone.

As we age, our households often have a way of getting smaller. As women, we tend to outlive our men. Over time, relationships end, children grow up and extended family may not be around.

But some women are giving me hope – and inspiration – by coming up with innovative co-living situations that provide the emotional and social support that they need and prove that we don’t have to grow old alone.

Take Brenda Braxton. The 68-year-old actress and entrepreneur first moved into her Harlem, New York City building back in 1987 at the recommendation of a friend who lived there. “I was doing a show in Rome, and I had a friend who said, ‘I've got a building you need to buy an apartment in,’” she says. Years later, “I had two other friends, and I said, ‘you need to move into this building.’ And sure enough, they moved in. Then about three years ago, another friend and her partner were looking for someplace, and I was like, ‘you need to come to my building.’ And sure enough, they came and bought an apartment in the building. So, we've been trying to keep it in our community.”

As a result, loneliness is rarely a concern for Braxton, who lives alone. During the holidays, "we'll have Christmas at one of our apartments. Then New Year's Eve, what we'll do is we'll start in one person's apartment, and we'll have before-dinner cocktails, and then we'll go to someone else's apartment and have a little dinner, and then we'll go to someone else's apartment to watch the ball drop and have dessert," she says. "We look out for each other."

A new way of living

Braxton isn't the only woman creating a community of support. AARP Executive Vice President and Chief Public Policy Officer Debra Whitman points out that shared housing and other co-living arrangements by unrelated people are on the rise and can help us thrive both financially and socially. “Living with others helps to cut the high costs of housing and utilities,” Whitman says, “But the benefits go far beyond the pocketbook. Staying connected to others supports body and brain health, and it's so easy to slip into isolation as we get older.”

Whitman, an expert on aging issues, comes up with policy solutions that can help make our lives easier in such areas as healthcare, financial security and caregiving. With so many of us living longer than those who came before us, Whitman uses her new book, The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond, to delve into practical solutions for creating a more meaningful life as we get older.

Shared housing might take the form of a "boomate" – think Golden Girls – scenario, or a woman who rents out a room to a friend. Let’s say that one seasoned sister owns a brownstone but for mobility reasons never leaves the first floor. Another becomes a widow and is looking to downsize and make a new start. Both benefit from companionship, shared financial resources and the safety net of knowing someone is there should an emergency or illness strike.

Sixteen percent of older adults share their homes with extended family members or non-relatives while six percent live in the home of an extended family member or non-relative, according to a 2023 study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Other women may create community by buying a house on the same block as their friends or moving into an accessory dwelling unit in a relative's back yard. When Braxton worried in 2021 that her then 84-year-old mother Lillian didn’t have enough support, "I set out to find an apartment for her here in my building, and sure enough, I found one, literally one flight down," Braxton says. Thanks to this arrangement, "I can go down and make sure she's okay, make sure she's eating properly. And, she has her own space."

Taking a communal approach

There are a lot of benefits to creating supportive communities as we age. On a practical level, our abilities and our health tend to decline as we get older, says Jessica Moorman, an assistant professor of communication at Wayne State University in Detroit. When we build supportive co-living environments, "you have a network of people that are in place to support you as you navigate that," Moorman says.

For a research study, Moorman interviewed single Black women about the types of communities they would want to live in as they aged. For many of them, non-traditional communal living arrangements were appealing because they could provide emotional and social support.

One participant wanted to form an island community with a group of sisterfriends. Another wanted to live in a neighborhood where family members owned homes in close proximity to each other. A third owned a duplex where she lived upstairs, and her sister lived downstairs with her children. Whitman notes an added benefit. “Being part of a community,” she says, “is one of the things that gives us a sense of purpose, which has been linked to staying healthier and living longer.”

Moorman, who is a 39-year-old single woman with no children, has contemplated how she might choose to live if she doesn't marry. "I bought a six-bedroom duplex," she says. While she may sell it one day, she also has the option of moving her single friends in the house with her as they age. "There is even space in the attic where a caregiver could live for free," she adds.

For all of these women, the question is how they can create a supportive environment to help them thrive throughout the inevitable ups and downs of life. The answer, as Braxton has found, may be to bring your support system to you. "Whether it's an apartment building, a condo building, a co-op building, or a [cluster] of private homes, find your community."

What's your ideal living situation as you grow older? What are some of the ways you build community? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Solo, But Not Alone: Sisters Sharing Spaces After 50

Who says you have to live by yourself as you age? Black women are redefining what it means to be in community.

A new way of living