Twenty-five years after "The Golden Girls" went off the air, the real-life version is unfolding across the country. In recent years, thousands of single women in their 50s, 60s and 70s have chosen to share houses or apartments — to have a roommate, maybe for the first time since college.
It’s a move often born of financial need — or in some cases, from a desire to keep up a more robust standard of living. According to one home-sharing agency in San Mateo, Calif., 58% of people looking for a roommate were women ages 50 and older in fiscal year 2009-2010 — up from 48% in 2006-2007. In Baltimore, a similar program has seen a 23% increase in women over 50 looking to share a home in the past two years.
The trend is so strong that its given rise to a cottage industry, including roommate-finding services that have niche areas devoted to older women, as well as firms, like St. Paul, Minn.-based Golden Girl Homes, that specialize in home-sharing for older women.
AM’s Alina Cho interviews two roommates.