To the editor: My former classmate, later colleague and longtime pal and ally, the late Janet Witkin, based a company in Los Angeles to do precisely what Los Angeles Instances reporter Grace Toohey described on this article: Alternative Living for the Aging, or ALA (“Facing California’s housing crisis, seniors are finding young roommates — and companionship,” Sept. 2).
Witkin labored tirelessly to match seniors with youthful individuals, who paid a modest hire in change for steady housing and offering a couple of useful companies to the aged house owner.
ALA was a convincing success. After Witkin’s premature loss of life in 2009 at age 62, the group was renamed as Reasonably priced Housing for the Getting older. The company nonetheless screens and matches seniors with youthful people who find themselves keen to be of some help to their senior “roommate.”
Different native companies additionally present matching companies. The matches present steady housing for the youthful renter at a month-to-month price nicely beneath unaffordable market charges, and the senior advantages financially and emotionally from the companionship.
It’s actually a win-win. Seniors get a bit of additional earnings, and the stock of reasonably priced housing will increase, nonetheless barely. One caveat: ALA additionally displays these matches. The danger of susceptible seniors is just too excessive to match with out monitoring.
Teresa DeCrescenzo, Studio Metropolis
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To the editor: Each time I hear about preparations for seniors renting out rooms to younger individuals, I’m reminded of the primary time I heard about this good thought.
I used to be attending a lecture and dialogue with the famend psychoanalyst and Holocaust refugee Dr. Hedda Bolgar. She was in her 90s on the time, residing in her own residence and nonetheless seeing sufferers. She talked about that she was in a position to reside independently by renting a room in her dwelling to a succession of younger individuals, typically school college students, who obtained decreased hire in change for doing small family duties that she was now not in a position to do.
I assumed it was an incredible thought on the time, and now, as I age, I feel that this could be a helpful association for me sooner or later sooner or later.
Bruce Hirsch, Culver Metropolis
