In a community of spare rooms, a plan to fill a few

This community's surplus of retirees has shaped our local quality of life in ways that are a cinch to see: the cultural offerings, the flourishing service economy, the relative peace and quiet.

But another significant impact of our demographic profile remains out of sight, behind drawn curtains and subdivision gates: In the midst of a housing shortage, Southwest Florida is home to a higher-than-normal share of empty bedrooms.

Every third house, apartment or condo in Sarasota County has just one person living inside. In almost 60 percent of these households, the single occupant is 65 or older.

That's well above average for the nation — where 27.7 percent of all housing units contain solo residents, and 37.5 percent of those residents are 65 or older. As housing costs across the country drift out of reach for Americans in essential fields like health care, education and law enforcement, nonprofit programs have popped up to facilitate home-sharing arrangements between isolated older householders and cash-strapped younger housemates.

Now, in Sarasota, the Friendship Centers have launched a pilot project that draws on these successful models, seeking to craft matches between elders with space to spare and workers trying to make ends meet. The goal, says Friendship Centers CEO Erin McLeod, is not only to address the housing crunch in a modest way, but also to forge new friendships for retirees old enough to have lost a number of loved ones.

"They’re rattling around in a big house," she says. "Money may not be so much of an issue for them, but boy, it would be nice to have someone to talk to at the end of the day."

Home-sharing networks have existed informally in the local retirement community for years. And several co-housing initiatives — where unrelated adults live in intentionally designed residences — have been pursued, only to falter for financial reasons. The Friendship Centers are launching this more structured attempt, the first here to be shepherded by an established nonprofit, because a Sarasota philanthropist came home from the hospital with an urge to help the folks who had cared for him.

In startup mode

What's now being called the Home Share Program began as the personal quest of a former commercial builder and real estate entrepreneur from New York, Bob Bernhard, whom McLeod describes as "an idea machine."

His projects in retirement include such ventures as funding tuition assistance at the Suncoast Criminal Justice Academy for ethnic minorities and women who want to join the Sarasota Police force (six so far); establishing an endowment that replenishes school libraries with thousands of books every year; and encouraging foster children to strive toward their goals and pursue higher educations.

"One of the things I liked to do was buy and sell land, and I was pretty successful at that," Bernhard says. "When I got down here I didn’t want to go into business. So after a while I swung into doing not-for-profit work. I go from one idea to another. What interested me the most — the fun part — was to see a need that wasn’t being filled, and see if I could do something about it."

While spending a week at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, he discerned another unmet need: Many health care staffers can't find affordable places to live.

"I had to be there, and I wasn’t under sedation or anything; I had some tubes hooked into me so I had to sit there," Bernhard recalls. "But I was perfectly alert, so I would chat it up with these people. The story I heard from almost everyone was that they loved working at the hospital; they liked living in Sarasota; but housing is a problem. So I went home and that was in my head."

Last year the Herald-Tribune wrote about the housing imbalance in Sarasota County, where 42 percent of all households meet the definition of cost-burdened — spending more than 30 percent of their income on mortgage payments or rent.  After his hospital stay, Bernhard looked at the census data on single-person occupancy in this community, and home sharing seemed like a natural part of the solution.

"So I called the hospital," he says, "and went from one person to another."

McLeod says that when the Community Foundation of Sarasota County steered Bernhard to her, she brought his concept to her board. After months of researching other home sharing models, McLeod hired Evan Farrar as the pilot project's first coordinator, with Bernhard underwriting the costs.

"I told them I would put up what was necessary to make it work," he says. "I like to do startups. If it works, then other people will come in and assist."

Bottles of ketchup

McLeod says the Home Share Program — a catchier name will be determined by a contest among the first participants — seemed like a good fit for the Friendship Centers, at least for now.

"Either it stays with us, or we help it find a forever home," she says. "It addresses the affordable housing shortage in a very small way. The intergenerational piece of it — we love that idea."

Farrar's job is to recruit home providers and prospective tenants, then use a detailed application process to find and facilitate potential matches. Once two people are inclined to share a home, Farrar will help them agree on payment and living arrangements, then check in with them periodically. He also hopes to create a community of home sharers, using the first participants as a focus group for the program. His goal is to make the first match by Sept. 15.

"Finding renters is easy; the home providers we really have to target," Farrar says. "We have a great advantage because we have a population of people here at the Friendship Centers that we can go to."

Sarasota County encourages home sharing by allowing as many as six unrelated adults to live in one household. While Farrar says he has encountered concerns from homeowners about whether their neighborhood deed restrictions allow home sharing, Sarasota real estate attorney Dan Lobeck says this is rarely an issue with single-family homes.

"It would be unusual for an HOA" — homeowners' association — "to require that the occupants of a home be related," he says. "Even where the governing documents limit a home to use as a 'single-family residence,' that is generally held to allow any group of people operating as a single housekeeping unit."

Condominium complexes tend to be more restrictive than traditional neighborhoods, he adds. And the rise of Airbnb-type arrangements has created more limitations on owners' abilities to rent out rooms, as opposed to sharing the entire home. This is just one of the technicalities that Farrar is learning to negotiate.

"Most programs start with a pilot project, because it’s such a complex process to figure out," he says. "And then there are the personal questions to settle: what do they share in terms of laundry, what's too late to come in after a job — things like that."

"Whether there are two bottles of ketchup in the refrigerator," McLeod adds. 

Interested? 

The Home Share Program is a pilot project brought to Friendship Centers by a benefactor who wanted to address affordable housing for young professionals in Sarasota, and to give senior homeowners the possibility of additional rental income. This pilot will work with seniors and young professionals to create a private domestic arrangement to share a home. 

Matches are facilitated by the Friendship Centers, and all efforts will be geared to making sure matches provide safety, comfort and an improved quality of life for all parties. If you are interested, please fill out the eligibility form at friendshipcenters.org/get-involved/community/home-share-program/. Or contact project coordinator Evan Farrar at 941-556-3208.

Read more

The Herald-Tribune's October series, "Catching Our Drift," examined the causes and effects of income inequality in Sarasota County. Find the stories and statistics at gatehousenews.com/sarasotadrift.