The Senior Roommate Population Hit 2.4 Million in Latest Data, Up 50 Percent Since 2015
Key Findings
- Nearly 2.4 million Americans age 65 and over lived in roommate situations in 2024, up from about 1.6 million in 2015, a 50 percent increase.
- Rochester, NY and Ocala, FL tied for the cities with the highest senior roommate rate at 7.2 percent, followed by Eugene-Springfield, OR and Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ. Florida holds 9 of the top 20 spots, more than any other state.
- Rochester, NY saw its senior roommate rate nearly double over the past decade, rising from 3.7 percent in 2015 to 7.2 percent in 2024, a 3.5 percentage-point increase, the largest of any U.S. metro.
- Senior roommate rates rise with metro wealth, not against it. Across 145 metros, the share of older adults living with roommates correlates positively with both median senior income and home values.
Housing affordability has reshaped how Americans live, and older adults are no exception. In fact, nearly half of all U.S. renter households were cost-burdened in 2024, a record, even as Social Security cost-of-living adjustments lagged actual housing inflation. Against that backdrop, the number of seniors who share a home with non-family roommates has quietly become a meaningful part of the U.S. housing picture. Recent reporting from NPR and The Boston Globe has captured the trend through rental platform search data and individual stories, and we set out to measure it at scale.
This analysis uses U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) data from 2015 through 2024, the most recent year available, and covers 150 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas. We identified senior roommate households in the data set by isolating true non-family living arrangements. The findings reshape several common assumptions about who lives with whom in later life, and where.
How Many Older Adults Live With Roommates in the U.S.?
The image of an American roommate has often been a college student or a young professional splitting rent in a city apartment. That image is changing. According to U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data, nearly 2.4 million Americans aged 65 and older lived in non-family roommate situations in 2024, up from about 1.6 million in 2015 — a 50 percent increase. That growth outpaced the 28 percent increase in the overall 65+ population.
| Year | 65+ population | Seniors in roommate situations | Share of 65+ population |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 47,732,480 | 1,585,418 | 3.3% |
| 2016 | 49,215,165 | 1,677,598 | 3.4% |
| 2017 | 50,815,712 | 1,771,281 | 3.5% |
| 2018 | 52,423,114 | 1,886,401 | 3.6% |
| 2019 | 54,074,028 | 2,066,196 | 3.8% |
| 2021 | 55,892,014 | 2,125,286 | 3.8% |
| 2022 | 57,822,315 | 2,225,453 | 3.9% |
| 2023 | 59,307,056 | 2,339,599 | 3.9% |
| 2024 | 61,245,283 | 2,381,602 | 3.9% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, table B09020, 1-year estimates. The Census Bureau did not release standard 2020 1-year ACS estimates.
The share of older adults in shared housing climbed from 3.3 percent in 2015 to a peak of 3.9 percent in 2023. In other words, roommate living became modestly more common among older Americans, not just more numerous. The rate started rising well before the post-2020 rent surge, suggesting structural drivers (an aging baby boomer cohort, declining marriage rates, longer life expectancies) rather than purely cyclical ones.
The trend has caught national attention. NPR reported in April that the share of adults 65 and over searching for roommates on the listings site SpareRoom tripled over the past decade, calling older adults “the fastest growing” roommate demographic. The Boston Globe, also in April, found that the share of Boston residents over 45 seeking roommates rose 50 percent between 2020 and 2025, outpacing both Los Angeles and New York.
What hasn’t been widely reported until now is where these households are concentrated and what local conditions predict them.
Top 20 U.S. Metro Areas for Senior Roommates in 2024
We analyzed ACS data across more than 145 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas to identify the cities with the highest share of adults 65 and over living in non-family, multi-adult households. The ranking that emerges is dominated by Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, the country’s leading retirement-migration destinations, alongside a handful of cold-weather outliers.
U.S. Metro Areas With the Greatest Share of Adults Age 65 and Over Living With Roommates
| Metro Area | Share of 65+ living with roommates |
|---|---|
| Rochester, NY | 7.2% |
| Ocala, FL | 7.2% |
| Eugene-Springfield, OR | 7.1% |
| Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ | 6.9% |
| Reno, NV | 6.7% |
| Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL | 6.6% |
| Punta Gorda, FL | 6.6% |
| Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ | 6.3% |
| Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL | 6.1% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 6.0% |
| Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA | 5.9% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 5.8% |
| Portland-South Portland, ME | 5.7% |
| Madison, WI | 5.6% |
| Port St. Lucie, FL | 5.5% |
| Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL | 5.5% |
| North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, FL | 5.3% |
| Springfield, MA | 5.2% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 5.2% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 5.2% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, table B09020, 2024 1-year estimates.
Florida holds nine of the top 20 spots, more than any other state. Arizona and Nevada each appear twice. Notably absent from the top 20 are the country’s largest metros by population: New York, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, and Dallas. That suggests the pattern tracks something other than urban density alone.
Ocala, FL tied with Rochester for the top spot. Ocala has been the country’s Number one city on the U-Haul Growth Index for three of the last four years, including 2025, based on net one-way move-in volume. U-Haul attributes the surge to Ocala’s low cost of living and healthy job market, and the Florida State Plan on Aging notes that roughly 900 people move to Florida every day, many of them age 60 or older. About 19.3 percent of Ocala’s population is 65 or over, above the national rate of 16.8 percent. When that much retiree in-migration concentrates in one mid-sized metro, shared housing tends to follow.
Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ is even more retiree-heavy than Ocala. In fact, 35 percent of Lake Havasu City residents are 65 or older, roughly double the national share. The metro made Travel + Leisure’s 2025 list of the 50 best places to retire in the U.S., with the publication citing abundant outdoor recreation opportunities as well as plentiful healthcare facilities. Of course, Arizona also boasts low property taxes and no state tax on Social Security benefits. The population swells each winter due to “snowbird” inflow, primarily from California. In a metro where one in three residents is already a senior, the math of shared housing works out differently than it does in the national average.
Rochester, NY reaches the top through a different mechanism. The metro is on the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities, and its overall cost of living runs roughly 20 percent below the national median and 40 percent below the New York state average. Local affordable senior housing providers report long waitlists, which may prompt people to double up in apartments. Rochester’s high senior roommate rate reflects something distinct from the Sun Belt pattern: a metro where affordable housing for seniors is both relatively inexpensive and chronically scarce. Senior shared housing helps absorb the gap.
The bottom of the ranking tells a different story. Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, posted the lowest share of senior roommates among the metros studied, at 1.7 percent. It’s followed by McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX (2.1 percent), Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC (2.1 percent), Fort Wayne, IN (2.1 percent), and Birmingham, AL (2.2 percent). These are lower-cost Midwestern, Appalachian, and mid-South metros, exactly the places where, if the affordability story were the whole story, senior roommates should be most common. Instead, they’re the least common.
Senior Roommate Rates Are Higher in Wealthier Metros, Not Poorer Ones
When we cross-referenced senior roommate rates with metro home values from the Zillow Home Value Index and median senior household incomes, the data pointed in a direction that runs counter to the dominant affordability narrative. Wealthier metros tend to have more senior roommates, not fewer.
Senior Roommate Rate by Metro-Level Senior Income Quartile, 2024
| Senior income quartile (metro level) | Average share of 65+ living with roommates |
|---|---|
| Lowest-income metros | 3.6% |
| 2nd quartile | 3.8% |
| 3rd quartile | 4.1% |
| Highest-income metros | 4.4% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2024 1-year estimates; analysis across 145 matched metros.
The Pearson correlation between metro median senior income and the share of older adults in roommate situations is approximately +0.30, a modest but real positive relationship. The correlation with metro home values is similar at +0.32, and rises to +0.47 when comparing rankings rather than raw values. The top 20 highest-rate metros had an average 2024 home value of about $470,000, versus $294,000 for the bottom 20.
That doesn’t mean wealthier seniors need roommates. The more likely explanation is geographic. High-cost coastal metros (parts of California, Washington, and the Northeast) tend to have both high home values and high senior incomes, and the affordability pressure narrative likely holds there. But the highest-ranked metros also include retirement destinations in Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, where in-migration, lifestyle considerations, and aging-in-place strategies all plausibly contribute to shared housing.
The home-value relationship is real but modest. Home values alone explain only about 10 percent of the variation in senior roommate rates across metros. The other 90 percent reflects retirement migration, senior housing supply, household composition, and local labor markets.
Fastest-Growing Metros for Senior Roommate Households
Comparing 2015 and 2024 ACS data reveals where the senior roommate trend has accelerated most over the past decade. Measuring change as percentage-point growth in the senior roommate rate (rather than raw household counts) makes metros of different sizes directly comparable and smooths over the sampling noise that affects single-year comparisons.
U.S. Metros With the Largest Increase in Senior Roommate Rate
| Metro area | 2015 rate | 2024 rate | Percentage point change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rochester, NY | 3.7% | 7.3% | +3.5 |
| Eugene-Springfield, OR | 3.7% | 7.1% | +3.4 |
| Huntsville, AL | 1.5% | 4.7% | +3.3 |
| Ocala, FL | 4.2% | 7.2% | +3.0 |
| Ogden, UT | 1.1% | 3.9% | +2.8 |
| Madison, WI | 2.9% | 5.6% | +2.7 |
| Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY | 2.8% | 5.1% | +2.3 |
| Raleigh-Cary, NC | 1.6% | 3.8% | +2.2 |
| Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ | 4.2% | 6.3% | +2.1 |
| Jackson, MS | 1.4% | 3.5% | +2.1 |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 1-year estimates, 2015 and 2024.
Rochester, NY leads the list with a 3.52 percentage-point increase between 2015 and 2024, nearly doubling its senior roommate rate from 3.73 percent to 7.25 percent. Rochester’s combination of a low cost of living, age-friendly civic infrastructure, and chronic waitlists for affordable senior housing appears to be intensifying. The metro is both the highest-rate market in the country and the fastest-growing, which suggests the dynamics driving it aren’t saturating.
Eugene-Springfield, OR ranks second with a 3.44-point jump, nearly matching Rochester. Eugene’s population growth depends heavily on migration rather than births, anchored by the University of Oregon and a growing tech sector locally branded as “Silicon Shire.” The broader Oregon picture sharpens the story. The number of Oregonians not in the labor force due to retirement hit 786,000 in 2023, a record. Eugene is one of the places where that statewide aging is most visibly showing up in living arrangements.
Huntsville, AL ranks third with a 3.27-point jump, despite not appearing in the Top 20 metros for overall senior roommate rate. Huntsville’s rate more than tripled, from 1.46 percent to 4.73 percent, the kind of growth that typically signals a structural shift rather than a statistical blip. Madison County, which includes Huntsville, has been adding roughly 10,000 residents annually since 2019, most of them drawn by an aerospace and tech cluster anchored by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, and Cummings Research Park. The City of Huntsville reports that more than 20,500 new housing units have been added since 2020. The likely explanation for the senior roommate surge here is the broader population boom: older workers brought in by defense contractors, retired military, and parents arriving alongside working-age adult children.
What’s Driving the Rise in Senior Roommates?
The senior roommate population has grown by about 50 percent over the past decade, according to Census household counts. Three forces are likely to sustain the trend through the rest of the decade.
The first is demographic. About 11,000 Americans turn 65 every day through 2030, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The 65-and-over population grew by more than 13 million people between 2015 and 2024, and the leading edge of the baby boomer cohort is now entering its 80s, the age where homeowners are most likely to be widowed, downsize, or take on a housemate.
The second is income. The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for 2026 is 2.8 percent, the second-smallest annual increase since 2021. CBS News reported that senior poverty under the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure rose to 15 percent in 2024 from 14 percent the previous two years, the highest among all age groups. Costs that matter most to older Americans (housing, medical care, long-term care) have outpaced the broader inflation index used to calculate COLAs.
The third is housing supply. Affordable senior housing remains in short supply across most U.S. metros, and waitlists for HUD Section 202 housing for older adults can run years long. Shared housing arrangements, formal or informal, help fill that gap.
Two predictions follow from the data. First, Sun Belt retirement metros are likely to see senior roommate shares continue to rise as in-migration from higher-cost coastal markets continues. Florida already holds nine of the top 20 metros. Second, the gender gap may narrow as later boomer cohorts (with higher rates of never-married and divorced status and lower homeownership than earlier generations) age into the 65-and-over bracket. However, men will likely remain higher in aggregate.
What the data can't answer is intent. The Census Bureau records who lives with whom, not why. Some older adults are choosing roommates for companionship or flexibility, or as an alternative to downsizing and leaving a familiar home. Others are pursuing more structured options, such as senior cohousing, where private homes share common spaces by design. Others are doubling up because the alternative is unaffordable.
Methodology
This analysis uses 1-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for the years 2015 through 2024. The Census Bureau did not release standard 2020 1-year ACS estimates due to pandemic data-collection disruptions, so that year is missing from the time series. We selected 150 of the largest metropolitan areas for the analysis.
Senior roommate households are defined as adults age 65 and over living in non-family households with two or more adults and not living alone, drawn primarily from ACS table B09020 (“Relationship by Household Type for the Population 65 Years and Over”). Unmarried partners were excluded from the “roommate” count where the ACS coding permitted, on the basis that an unmarried partner is not a roommate.
Metro-level rankings are based on 2024 1-year estimates across 150 of the largest metropolitan statistical areas, matched to Zillow Home Value Index data for 2023 and 2024. Correlations between senior roommate rates and home values were calculated using both Pearson and Spearman methods. State-level breakdowns by sex use 2024 1-year ACS estimates.
ACS 1-year estimates carry wider margins of error than 5-year estimates, particularly for smaller metros. The 2015-to-2024 comparison in Table 4 measures change as the percentage-point shift in the senior roommate rate, which is more robust to sampling noise than raw household-count changes.