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Silvia Salazar, right, speaks with her mother, Ester, left, and housemate Darlene Hastings at their home in South Gate on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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Silvia Salazar, right, speaks with her mother, Ester, left, and housemate Darlene Hastings at their home in South Gate on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Every morning, Darlene Hastings, a 55-year-old retired postal worker, makes a pot of coffee strong enough to wake her roommates Silvia Salazar, 52, and Ester Salazar, 92, and ready the household for a day of reading, puzzles, television, Spanish practice and cooking.
The trio came to be housemates during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Silvia was still traveling between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., for work in cancer research. She wanted someone to be with her mother at their shared South Gate home. Regular companionship, she figured, would help Ester and their miniature black chicken, Pearl, during those work trips.
“I had this room in my house, and I thought, ‘I wonder what exists out there that can provide support?’ ” Silvia recalled. “It seemed like it was too good to be true.”
With help from the nonprofit Affordable Living for the Aging, she met Hastings, whose own long-term roommate had moved away, bringing her to the organization in search of affordable housing.
Nearly six years into their arrangement with Silvia now retired, the roommates have settled into a comfortable routine that affords them stable housing in Southern California’s high-priced landscape. Their living arrangement is also part of what experts see as a potential solution for the region’s affordable housing crisis.
The rise of elder roommates
If you spend any time on social media, the quest to “rent a room” has made its way to senior citizens, many of whom are priced out of apartments or assisted living facilities.
The West Hollywood-based Affordable Living for the Aging, which has been matching homeowners with low-income room seekers since 1978, has seen its program participation rise 60% in two years, according to Maureen Tuohy, the nonprofit’s marketing and development manager.
The ALA program connects a homeowner who’s willing to share their living space with another person for companionship, rent or support services.
To meet the rising need, senior home-sharing programs are expanding in Southern California, helping bridge two demographics that are key to solving the housing crisis, experts say. According to the National Shared Housing Resource Center, there are almost 20 such organizations in the state, and at least 50 across the country.
Margot Kushel, director of UC San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, says seniors with and without property represent two sides of the housing coin — the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
While affluent baby boomers own the majority of Southern California’s housing inventory, Kushel’s research found that seniors make up nearly half of all single homeless people and are also the fastest growing group among all residents.
“[Baby boomers] are a generation with a ton of bad luck,” Kushel said.
Those generational knocks include the Great Recession, loss of worker benefits and protections, and the rising disparity between incomes and cost of living, all of which have pushed seniors into homelessness, she said. Balancing fixed pensions or Social Security benefits with high living costs is another constant challenge.
Southern California’s rental prices surpass the national average by more than 60%, according to Apartment List, with one-bedroom units listed for at least $2,000 per month in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, and at least $1,500 in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
According to the 2020 Census, California is home to about 6.5 million people over the age of 65, about 16.5% of the state’s total population. A follow-up survey in 2022 found that about half of those individuals lived in a household experiencing poverty.
The California Department of Aging predicts that by 2030, for the first time in the state’s history, older adults will outnumber those under 18. And by 2040, its older adult population is projected to reach 11.4 million — about 28% of the total population.
Meanwhile, AARP found costs for long-term senior care services and supports increased by almost 50% between 2019 and 2024.
In addition to mitigating economic hardships, Kushel said that seniors entering home-sharing programs help take the pressure off limited supportive housing developments that could go to other vulnerable individuals.
“Anything we can do to better use our housing stock is a good thing,” Kushel said. “Any way that we can have fewer empty bedrooms and more density of housing is a great thing.”
In turning spare bedrooms into another housing option below market rate, they also offer those struggling to stay housed with one more choice. More choice, Kushel has learned, is essential in helping individuals find housing.
“One of the biggest lessons from home-sharing is that choice matters,” Kushel said. “People should have some agency over who it is that they live with.”
Home-sharing expands across Southern California
Choice is what Huntington Beach-based business founder Simone Kelly has emphasized in her company Seniornicity, which launched in 2024. Among the senior services offered is “presence-based” home-sharing, a housing model that pairs empty-nesters with roommates to fill spare rooms, boost money streams and bring in companionship.
“It’s not about kicking seniors out of their homes. It’s about how we utilize the space that they’re using right now,” Kelly said.
According to a 2026 Redfin study, seniors live in their homes for an average 12 years, but in the Los Angeles metropolitan area that encompasses Orange County and part of the Inland Empire, that number is closer to 20 years. This demographic owns 10% more of the housing supply than millennials, too.
With a background in estate sales, Kelly regularly took notice of homes with upstairs spaces that endured years of neglect as their aging residents only made use of ground floors. She says using that inventory to bridge the challenges of loneliness and affordability is gaining traction in her business.
Kelly’s website charges over a dozen of providers, some of whom are property managers that can oversee home-sharing, to offer their services there. Free to seniors and a goal of serving one million seniors a year across the country, she hopes to make change in the market.
Other initiatives are taking a community-centric approach, like Love Costa Mesa’s Home Sharing Program, which is aimed at seniors in the city where they make up about half of all homeowners, according to the 2020 Census. Marketing the program around the city’s churches, businesses and community centers, project co-lead Betsy Densmore is taking a page out of her own parents’ home-sharing experience.
“Over time, as my parents needed more help, we began finding ways to recruit people who were older and more mature, but who also had a need for housing that was below market,” Densmore said. “It worked out really, really well.”
While still in the early stages of the program, Densmore says matching fellow seniors would be beneficial to both parties.
But she says the success of home-sharing depends on the right match. The Love Costa Mesa program involves a questionnaire for both homeowners and home-seekers, remote and in person interviews and a memorandum of understanding, which is an unbinding lease in case the matches are unsuccessful.
The Salazars and Hasting in South Gate saw their weeklong trial as strangers turn into years as family, sharing everything from meals to holidays. They say their success depends on the will to try something new.
“I had a lot of doubts,” Silvia Salazar said. “Change is difficult for people in our age group. We get so set in our ways.”