Group that helps senior women find roommates expands into Waterloo region

A group that helps older women find each other so that they can live together and share expenses is expanding its services in Waterloo region.

Founder Pat Dunn said she started a Facebook group in 2019 called Senior Women Living Together after the sudden death of her husband forced her to go through her savings "at an extremely rapid rate" in a bid to put a roof over her head.

"I thought, well, maybe there's some other women like me," the 74-year-old Peterborough resident said. "So I invited a few women ... to come and talk with me about what it might be like to live together and share expenses."

"I thought maybe in total I'd get like 10 women, but I was stunned to find 50 members by the end of the first week, and by the end of the first month there were 200. So I thought, OK, this isn't just my problem."

Through research, Dunn said she learned that there were approximately 300,000 single senior women in Ontario who are living in poverty.

The growth of the Facebook group led Senior Women Living Together to start a website in April of 2021, in order to better serve members.

60 success stories so far

Dunn said Senior Women Living Together has had "60 success stories" so far.

"Sixty women have found others to live with and then together they've gone out and found places to live. The problem is that rents have increased by like almost three times what they were in 2019 when I started. And so now we're having to help them find affordable places to live," she said.

Senior Women Living Together is now building partnerships with builders, non-profits, housing corporations and private landlords in order to talk about and find ways to make their shared living concept still affordable "even with the horrible rent increases," Dunn said.

Outreach program

The group is now doing an outreach program across Ontario to make more women aware of its presence and the service they offer.

"We decided [to do] an actual outreach procedure and program and so we started up in Renfrew County, then we did the Greater Sudbury area," Dunn said.

"We're doing Kitchener-Waterloo now for three months and then we're going to go to Durham County… We just find it's a more appropriate way for us to share who we are and what we do when we can do it community by community."

Carolyn Mackenzie says Senior Women Living Together has given her hope. (Haydn Watters/CBC)

Women who join the group create a profile that's posted on the website where other members check for compatibility.

"It's kind of like a dating website. That way they can read the other profiles to [find] … someone that's just compatible [including] finding someone that's compatible on where they want to live or what kind of housing or just the things they like to do," Dunn said.

Carolyn Mackenzie, who joined the group early on and became fast friends with Dunn, told CBC News in 2019 she couldn't believe how closely she relates to many of the women posting in the group.

"Single women on their own have such a hard time making ends meet," Mackenzie said at the time. "I thought, 'Oh, finally, maybe there is something besides going into a retirement home or a long-term care centre.'"

She said the group has given her hope.

Before they move in together, women "work through the process of talking about absolutely everything about living together. Fundamental things like shopping and paying the rent and cleaning and laundry and all of those decisions that you need to have some house rules around," Dunn said.

Additionally, she said they also talk about things like aging together.

"What happens if one of us starts showing signs of dementia? How would we manage that? What kinds of things do we need to have in our home in order to age and stay together and not be put into long term care before we absolutely need to be? So [the website has] a section on that."