Co-Housing Communities are the Answer for Affordably Housing Young Adults and Seniors

This piece is a follow-up to “The Second Newburyport Renaissance is About to Begin. A Retrospective from the Year 2051,” published January 7, 2025. In that piece, John Giordano argues for four major reforms that would improve Newburyport over the coming decades. This article details one of those reforms: co-housing communities.

My recent opinion piece, “The Second Newburyport Renaissance is About to Begin. A Retrospective from the Year 2051,” aimed to – if I can borrow from the great writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez – chronicle a history foretold. Imagining Newburyport from the perch of my 90th birthday was an opportunity to highlight four advancements I’d like to see Newburyport consider in the years ahead. I’ll offer some more thoughts on the first advancement I see as essential to Newburyport’s future.

Newburyport is in critical need of new models for living: ecological, economic, social, and cultural. Exceptional city planning starts with human needs. As you look around an ever-changing Newburyport, a few things seem clear that the sale of our defunct Kelly and Brown School buildings attest. We have an affordable housing problem that is changing the demographic portrait of our city, and thus leaving behind groups of people who have so much to offer.

We need to think harder about how to make Newburyport more accessible to our elders at the stage of life when the purse strings tighten, but also the young people who grew up here or work in Newburyport but are closed out of the housing market.

We need more regulated and subsidized housing – rental and home ownership – that allows seniors and those just getting started as independent adults to have a solid footing in our community. While we have senior housing options, we ghettoize our wise elders in age-segregated housing. As for young people, they largely leave Newburyport for good or live in their childhood homes with their parents. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I propose we bring the best of the over 55-community model and the co-housing model together in Newburyport by encouraging the development of both rental and ownership housing options that address more than one challenge at the same time.

Imagine this: two nearby housing structures — one for seniors and one for 20 and 30-somethings – with a shared communal space. The best of the over-55-year-old model would be extended to those who are just figuring out “adulting” in a moment when rising property values and growing income inequality have made home ownership a pipe dream for so many. Regulated pricing would be in effect on both the purchase and sale end of homeownership, as it is with current affordable housing options in Newburyport. A lease-to-own option would aim to help young people build toward homeownership in a supportive way.

Grandparents and grandchildren have always gotten along famously. The sandwich generation between them could be the stewards of such an experiment in future living. Co-housing residents of these two generations could share the resources that co-housing offers: tools, equipment, knowledge, and muscle. They could care for, and learn from, each other. For example, knowledge exchange could be formalized; seniors could give seminars on building credit and investing, while young people offer tech support for smartphones and computers, moving furniture, etc. I imagine some serious intergenerational baking taking place in Newburyport Co-Housing.

Seniors often feel isolated, as if society has left them behind. Too many young people today are struggling with independence. I know this first hand from my work coaching 20-somethings who are struggling to get traction in life. Co-housing offers supportive steps toward independence for young adults, while simultaneously offering support and intergenerational connections for our seniors. Community is ultimately about belonging. Our hyper connected tech age has, ironically, fostered an epidemic of loneliness. Let’s give two huge demographic groups better economic footing in a community that is currently pricing them out.   

But how do you mandate that a 30-something must sell a property they own? Where does the money come from to launch such a thing? This is where we would need to go beyond merely envisioning and implement a process of practical thinking that considers not-for-profit organization models, real estate trust models, federal and state funding, and local stewardship. The naysayers will, well…say no. I already know which city councilors will say it’s impossible or unnecessary or too expensive. If a community’s goal is to care for its people, then you find a way to make something like this work. Let’s start by thinking about this outside the mayor’s office and city council. If we are going to care for our people, the thinking starts with us.

John Giordano
Newburyport resident

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