Given MEA’s growing interest in Golden Girls housing, we’ve been scanning the web for great content on the topic and the Golden Girls Network Substack is one of our best sources. In this post, they make a compelling case for why community-rooted housing makes so much sense. If you’re curious about this topic, you might want to join Elizabeth White and me for our next Golden Girls weekend workshop in Santa Fe May 21-24to learn more about what MEA is doing, but also what you can do in your local community.
Let me say this the way I would say it to a friend sitting across from me with a cup of coffee in hand.
I do not think women are suddenly becoming strange, anti-family, anti-relationship, or incapable of living “normal” lives. I think women are looking around, doing the math, checking their energy levels, checking their bank accounts, checking their peace, and asking one very reasonable question:
Why am I trying to carry an entire life by myself when community might actually make more sense?
Because that is really what this is about.
Not failure.
Not giving up.
Not some fringe little experiment.
It is women, a whole lot of women, starting to look at intentional cohabitation, shared housing, co living, cohousing, women’s communities, whatever name you want to give it, and realizing that maybe the old model is not the only model.
And honestly, maybe it never should have been.
The timing is not random either. Housing costs are brutal, especially for single-income households. Recent housing data showed that more than 20 million single women owned homes in 2025, the highest number on record, but affordability pressures are still intense, and the rate of single women homeownership actually slipped because household formation grew faster than ownership did. In plain English, more women are building lives on their own, but keeping those lives affordable is still hard.
Then you add loneliness to the mix, and now we are talking about something bigger than money.
The U.S. Surgeon General has been blunt about this. Social isolation and loneliness are not just sad feelings we are supposed to quietly swallow and get over. They are real public health concerns. HHS notes that poor social connection is linked to higher risks for heart disease and stroke, and the Surgeon General’s advisory has warned that chronic loneliness can increase dementia risk in older adults by about 50 percent.
So when women start saying, “You know what, I would rather build a life with trusted people around me than sit alone in a house I can barely afford,” that is not irrational. That is adaptive. That is smart. That is a grown woman looking at the board and deciding she is tired of playing a losing game.
And let us talk honestly about age, because this matters too.
A lot of women looking into intentional living are not twenty-two-year-olds trying to split rent with three roommates and one suspiciously moldy couch. Many are older women, divorced women, widowed women, women whose children are grown, women who have spent decades taking care of everybody else, and women who are now asking what they want their own next chapter to feel like.
U.S. Census data show that among older adults, women are especially likely to be living alone. About 27 percent of women ages 65 to 74 lived alone in 2022, and that rose to 43 percent for women age 75 and older. Census also reported that women made up 65 percent of older adults living in poverty in 2021.
That right there tells a story.
Not every woman living alone is lonely. Not every woman living alone is struggling. Some love it. Some fought hard for that peace and they deserve every inch of it.
But a whole lot of women are starting to ask whether there is a better middle ground between total isolation on one end and institutional senior living on the other.
That is where intentional cohabitation starts to look less like a novelty and more like a solution.
Research is catching up to what a lot of women already know in their bones. A 2024 review in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society pointed to poverty and loneliness as major reasons older women are exploring resident-coordinated housing models. Another 2025 review on community-based housing for older adults noted growing interest in models like cohousing because they combine private living space with shared facilities, mutual support, and resident participation in governance.
And here is the part I think matters most.
This is not just about saving money, though yes, that matters.
It is about safety.
It is about someone noticing if you do not come out of your room.
It is about having help with a ride, a grocery run, a sick day, a dog emergency, a bad breakup, or just a rotten Tuesday.
It is about shared meals when you want company, and a closed door when you do not.
It is about private space, but not isolated living.
There is a difference, and women know it.
AARP has also been talking more openly about house sharing as part of retirement planning and aging in place, noting that shared living can offset housing costs, provide income, and build in everyday support. Their coverage on solo aging and housing options reflects the same shift: older adults are increasingly thinking about home sharing and community-based living as practical tools, not last resorts.
That is why I think this trend is growing.
Women are tired of models that ask them to be financially stretched, emotionally isolated, physically overextended, and somehow still call that independence.
A lot of women are not chasing some fantasy commune in linen trousers and moon water. They are looking for something much more grounded than that. They want affordable. They want sane. They want safe. They want community with boundaries. They want a front door that locks, shared values, clear agreements, and people who know how to communicate like adults.
Frankly, that sounds less radical to me than pretending everybody should manage aging, rising costs, and modern life completely alone.
Maybe the real shift is not that women are changing.
Maybe women are finally saying out loud what they have known for a long time:
Life works better when it is shared well.
And that, to me, is the heart of the rise in intentional co living among women. It is not desperation. It is discernment.
It is women building lives that fit the world as it actually is, not the one we were told to expect.
-Golden Girls Network