The New York Times just put home sharing on the national stage. Here is what it means, and the data behind it. | 
| | JULY 2026 |
| | Homesharing made The New York Times.
And the country is paying attention. Dear Annette, last month something happened that we have been working toward for years. The New York Times ran a feature on home sharing as a serious answer to the affordability crisis facing older adults, and HomeShare Oregon was in it. Not as a footnote. As one of the programs showing the country what this model can do. The piece followed real homeowners and home seekers who found each other and stayed housed because of it. It named the truth we talk about every month: most older adults do not want to leave the homes they love, the cost of staying keeps climbing, and there is a spare room down the hall that can solve both problems at once. Home sharing is no longer the quiet option. It is a national conversation now, and you have been part of building it. | | | | As Featured In The New York Times Older Adults Turn to ‘Golden Girls’ Housing The New York Times · The New Old Age · By Paula Span · June 27, 2026 A growing network of home-sharing programs is helping people find compatible housemates. The story profiled homeowners in their 80s staying in the houses they love, home seekers priced out of the rental market who found stability, and the state legislators now writing home sharing into law. HomeShare Oregon was featured among about 55 programs nationwide, singled out for the secure online platform behind our matches. “It’s like online dating, except that people who have rooms can meet people who need rooms. And it’s a lot more secure.” Candice Smith, Executive Director, HomeShare Oregon, in The New York Times |
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| | | | Two problems, one solution, in every state. This is the picture our July social posts are built around, and it is the reason home sharing is not a regional idea. In every state, two groups are living the same crisis from opposite sides. On one side: older homeowners with modest incomes and a spare room they no longer use. On the other: older renters spending more than they can afford on rent, or unable to find anything affordable at all. They live in the same towns. They just have not been introduced. 
empty bedrooms in senior-owned homes | older renters who can’t afford rent | of them severely cost-burdened |
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That is not a shortage of space. It is a shortage of introductions. In Oregon alone: 462,811 spare bedrooms in senior-owned homes, and 69,612 cost-burdened senior renters. The same story plays out in California, Florida, Texas, New York, and every state on the map. The rooms already exist. Home sharing is how the two sides meet. | | | | Home Sharing Works Nationally The proof is in the participation. This is not a model that only works in Portland. People are choosing home sharing in every corner of the country, right now. participants across all 50 states + D.C. | home providers offering a room | home seekers looking for one |
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The demand is broad and it is national: Oregon (7,408), California (5,300), Colorado (2,639), Florida (2,047), Texas (1,121), Washington (953), and hundreds more in states from Maine to Hawaii. Every one of those numbers is a person who looked at the housing math and found a better answer. When people ask whether home sharing can scale beyond one city, this is the answer: it already has. | | | | Two pieces worth passing along. If someone in your life has a spare room and a rising set of bills, these are the two pieces to send them this month. Both are written for home providers, and both make the same quiet case: the answer might already be inside the house. 
| For the homeowner who keeps redoing the math on property taxes, groceries, and utilities, and has started noticing the listings. There is an option between selling and struggling: open the empty room down the hall. The homeowner stays, a neighbor gets affordable housing, and two people are better off. Read the post → |
| The guest room became the storage room became the room you walk past. Across the country, 44 million homes have a spare bedroom sitting unused. Cleared out and offered thoughtfully, that room is the most direct affordable-housing intervention available: no construction, no policy change, just a door that opens. Read the post → |
| | | | Home sharing is having a national moment, from the front of The New York Times to the data that shows the same opportunity in all fifty states. You are part of why it is being taken seriously. Thank you for following this work, for sharing it, and for being in it with us. 
Executive Director, HomeShare Oregon | | HomeShare Oregon is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit · EIN: 86-3754694 You are receiving this email because you are a participant or stakeholder of
HomeShare Oregon. |
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