Housemate Trend Growing

Jim Griffin and Brennan Byers couldn’t be more different.

Griffin is a sales rep and single father of three small children. Salt-and- pepper hair creasing his temples, he thinks daily about meeting his monthly sales quota and caring for his kids.

Byers is an actor and leather worker who has never been married. He starts each morning with a long swim and a quick scan of Daily Variety before retreating to his upstairs studio.

The two men do have one thing in common: They both have housemates. But even this life-style choice takes them down very different paths.

Griffin lives about a mile from the ocean in a Newport Beach mobile home with a fellow salesman whom he rarely sees. Byers lives with a single mother of three college-age daughters in her roomy, two-story California bungalow in South Pasadena.

“Finding a roommate helped me land back on my feet,” said Griffin, who owned a home in La Verne before his divorce. “There isn’t a lot of room, but it’s affordable, and I’m close to the beach, which is great for my kids.”

Added Byers: “There’s no other way I could afford to live in this house or this community.”

Griffin and Byers are among the growing number of Americans who are sharing their living quarters. From 1980 to 1990, the number of people who checked the “roommate” box on the U.S. Census form rose from 3.3 million to 4.1 million. In California, the number rose from 640,924 to 900,633.

People are doubling up not only for financial reasons, but also for security, companionship, sharing household chores, launching a new career or even reducing dependence on day care. And for older people, home sharing can often mean new independence as well.

“It may simply mean having someone nearby to help you reach a can of beans from the top shelf,” said Leo Baldwin, author of “Homesharing and Other Lifestyle Options.”

“That’s clearly a better alternative than waiting all month, hoping your grandson will stop by,” Baldwin said.

A compatible housemate can also have social advantages. “If you have trouble meeting men and women, move in with someone who has no trouble meeting people,” said Bruce Brown, author of “The Complete Roommate Handbook.”

“Their leftovers will be perfect for you,” Brown said.

Using a little creativity, housemates can even help you buy a house.

Marty Rodriguez, a Glendora-based realtor with Century 21, said one of her clients bought a house that was being rented by three female housemates. Instead of giving them notice to vacate, the buyer moved in with them. “He didn’t even ask for the master bedroom,” she recalled.

Another client of hers bought a house with a co-signer, then promptly found two housemates to help him meet his monthly mortgage. “That way,” Rodriguez said, “instead of sharing equity in his home, which was popular in the ‘80s, he was building up the equity all for himself.”

Margaret Harmon, director of the National Shared Housing Resource Center, a nonprofit clearinghouse in Burlington, Vt., for more than 450 shared-housing programs around the country, believes the trend is fueled by several social and economic factors, including a growing population of singles, high housing costs, low wages and an erosion of the stubborn American ethic, which equates independence with living alone.

“There’s so much emphasis on this notion of independent living, that even if people feel lonely and isolated, they figure that’s what they’re supposed to do,” said Harmon, a single parent who has reared her children in shared housing since 1975.

Similarly, when Maxine Nelson, owner of RoomMate Finders, the oldest roommate matching and referral service in the United States, asked some of her recent upscale clients whether they wanted to be interviewed for this story, they declined because of what they cited was home sharing’s negative image.

“As lawyers, doctors and accountants, who could certainly afford to have their own place, they didn’t want to advertise that they chose to live with a housemate,” she said. “They thought it would tarnish the public’s perception of them as successful, independent professionals.”

Author Brown said that even these professionals, however, recognize that roommates give them more, not fewer, lifestyle options.

“It’s amazing what you can do with the proper roommate situation,” he added, “if you just take some calculated risks.”

Your calculations should begin with assessing whether you would make a good candidate for sharing a house or apartment. For example, if you have a disability, you may wish to extend a portion or all of the rent for an exchange in service. If you have grown children who have moved out, you may wish to invite a college student to live with you to revitalize your household. If you’re a divorced mother with three children, you may choose to live with another single parent who works different hours than you so you can reduce your child-care expenses.

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But that’s only the first step. If home sharing seems a viable alternative for meeting some of your needs, you next need to visualize your perfect housemate and also determine whether you’re someone that other people can live with.

Test your roommate potential by composing a list of preferences. For example, ask yourself how you feel about age, education, pets, smoking, music and several other lifestyle choices.

“I counsel home sharers and home seekers alike to thoroughly explore their preferences and expectations at the outset,” said Dorothy Pray, director of the Inland Mediation Board, a government-sponsored referral service in the Inland Empire. “This can prevent disastrous consequences later on.”

Added Deanna Sclar, author of “Housemates: A Practical Guide to Living With Other People,” “Decide what the real limits of your tolerance are, regardless of what you feel they should be.”

There are several sources that can assist your housemate hunt. If you’re a member of a professional organization, put the word out to your colleagues or place an ad in the group’s newsletter. Brown doesn’t recommend home sharing with a co-worker, however.

“Office politics can be stressful,” he said, “and it’s not fun to have to constantly watch what you say to your ever-present roommate for fear that it might come back to haunt you or even get you fired.”

Other leads for roommates can come from church bulletins, university kiosks, college housing offices and your local newspaper. Advertising in papers involves less risk than in the past because seekers and providers can use voice mail and answering services to screen callers. (See accompanying story on how to write an ad.)

If you don’t want to pursue your search alone, consider using a roommate-matching service. Many are affiliated with local senior centers or city and county housing departments. These nonprofit organizations typically provide potential housemates with a long checklist to help them improve their chances of making a good match.

They also help potential sharers complete home-sharing agreements, monitor newly made matches and even act as referees to settle disputes. Fees are generally small. At the Pasadena Senior Center, for example, clients pay $5 to register and $25 for a match, which is split between the seeker and provider.

The majority of nonprofit organizations conduct employment and criminal checks and ask applicants to sign a statement saying they haven’t been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony; however, many simply don’t have resources to verify this information. As a result, most agencies also ask you to sign a release of responsibility form.

RoomMate Finders, a for-profit service, charges clients $95. Clients can also order a credit check for $15 and a check of court records for $45. Of course, if your new tenant or home sharer has just moved from another state, your check of court records would be worthless unless done for each state.

After a promising phone interview, prospective housemates should agree to meet at a neutral site such as a coffee shop, shared-housing experts agree. If the face-to-face meeting goes well, only then should you visit the place you’ll be sharing.

“It’s much easier to say no in a public place than inside your own home,” author Baldwin cautioned.

Once you’ve found your new housemate, both of you need to write your home-sharing agreement. Such a contract can be more difficult than hammering out a Middle East peace accord. Without one, however, bathrooms and kitchens can become battlefields, and such issues as finances, parking and privacy can become powder kegs.

“Be as detailed as possible without shackling either or both of you,” Baldwin said.

Instead of a commitment to keep the house clean, for example, Sclar recommends the “Summer Camp Method,” which lists specific chores and the times they need to be completed.

After the parties are happy with their agreement, they should sign a contract. It can be renewed monthly. “That’s still the best way I know to get the rent paid,” Pray added.

To test a new agreement, Baldwin suggested actually living with your potential housemate for a weekend, an entire week or even longer. “If you find yourself thinking of ways you plan to change the housemate’s behavior, your home sharing could be in trouble from the beginning,” he said.

Despite their fears of living with a stranger, homeowner Floydie Davis, 80, of Altadena, and home seeker Eliza Dangerfield, 74, recently became housemates. Matched by the Pasadena Senior Center, the two widows said they decided they were just too nervous to live alone any longer.

Said Eliza, who now drives Floydie to the grocery store and her doctor appointments: “We just agree not to disagree. I hate to cook, but I love to eat, so she does the cooking, and I do the cleaning.”

Added Floydie, who is now able to comfortably maintain her home with Eliza’s help, “We just blend in; we’re very happy.”

Suzanne Bell, 24, and Marina Sousa, 22, have also decided to home share, although just two weeks ago they didn’t even know each other. Bell, a director of a service that prepares students for the SAT tests, didn’t relish the prospect of paying $1,195 for another month’s rent on her two-bedroom Brentwood apartment. Sousa, a design student from a small rural town in Northern California, was new to Los Angeles and wanted one person, a housemate, who knew that she was “alive down here.”

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After checking some seedy one-bedroom places that were “ridiculously expensive,” she visited RoomMate Finders, who interviewed her and gave her 16 pages of referrals. Her interviewer then pared her list to about 10 choices, including Bell, one of the company’s clients. Bell had contracted the service because she said she had neither the time nor the experience to conduct a proper search for a housemate.

From her list, Sousa found Bell two hours before she was to go back home. They had a few follow-up phone calls over the next few weeks before making the decision to live with each other.

Now the two go jogging together. Bell, an exercise freak, takes Sousa to her dance studio, and Sousa, a movie buff, gets Bell to see films before they become available on videocassette.