At one point in American history, boarding houses were common. People rented rooms, studio apartments, sometimes with private bath, sometimes shared. Sometimes that came with kitchen privileges in a common area.
A Kootenai County organization has brought back the boarding house model as people look for less expensive places to live.
Homeshare Kootenai County is a non-profit that matches people who need a place to live with people who have rooms to rent. The max rent is $800. Duncan Menzies is the matchmaker.
This interview lightly edited for length and clarity.
DN: So are most of the folks who get involved with this 50 or 55 and older, or do you have a nice mix of demographics?
Duncan Menzies: Yeah, I would say majority of our providers, people with the space that they're opening up, are 55 and older. And then I would say it's the majority that are seniors as well seeking a place. But then outside of that, you know, it's mostly people in their 30s working a normal job. And then we get a handful of students as well.
DN: Are most of the people who are doing this doing it for financial reasons?
DM: No, I would say the majority aren't for financial reasons, although it's one reason. We get a lot of seniors who are just looking for companionship, someone to be in the space, not necessarily a longterm friend or someone to like, but someone to just be around. We get a lot of people that want to share their space and not be alone. And then we also get a lot of people that are like, oh yeah, in order to stay in my home, I need the extra income I need to supplement.
DN: What do you look for when you try to make a match between somebody who has someplace to rent and somebody who's looking for a place to rent?
DM: Looking for compatibility. Usually a majority of people are looking for no pets, looking for a single person, and then looking for the right gender. And then outside of that, we might have some providers that are really looking for someone that has the same belief system as them or some people that are open to anything. It's a match by match basis.
DN: So you sit at a table with two folks and you observe or you ask questions, you try to elicit some conversation? How does that work?
DM: Both would send an application or sometimes I'll get a home seeker and we'll just be on the phone. I'm like, you should meet with this person. And then we fill out all the paperwork afterwards. By the time that they have that first meeting, then I already think that they're going to be a really good fit and they've checked all the boxes. And then it's them just having a good vibe check and talking about more in detail how they want to share the space.
We really market to the other senior services. There's so many in Kootenai County. And then connecting with local churches too.
DN: Roughly how many pairs have you matched over three years in Coeur d'Alene?
DM: We've matched 70 since 2022. This past year we had a new partnership with the Roosevelt Inn in downtown Coeur d'Alene. That used to be a bed and breakfast. So that's like a 13-unit semi-communal living space. We've been matching there too.
DN: Your offices are in that same building. You get a chance to observe how well it's working.
DM: Yeah. I also live in and manage the building too. My heart for the building is, you know, it's a space where there's shared ownership and people that are living here feel like it's their home, It's not someplace they're just renting and sleeping and leaving, There are shared common areas. And it's a space to invite your friends and have community or get to know the other people that are living in the building, more so than if you're living in an apartment, apartment complex.
DN: Once you've made a match, are you kind of like a social worker where you go out and check on how those matches are working? Or do you leave it to the two parties who are involved in that agreement tomonitor and police it?
DM: We leave it to the two parties. So in our agreements, on either side, when we're doing the lease, we have a two-week trial period. Some people are like, no, we don't want that. We want to go straight into it. If there's that two-week trial period, then they check in and make sure everything's good before they go into something more long-term. But then I don't actively check in after that. It's usually the seeker or provider that'll reach out to me and be like, "Hey, can we have a discussion about something that's not being done that we expect to be done?" Then I'll come in after that, but it's up to them to let me know what's going on.
DN: Are most of the matches that you've made working out?
DM: Yeah, there's only been one since I've been here where there's had to be mitigation and solving some problems and resulted in it not working out and them having to cancel the agreement. But everything else has worked out fine.
The majority of the agreements are on a month-to-month basis. A lot of the seekers maybe are looking for something in transition. They're not looking for something long-term. They might be at a turning point in life. Maybe they're divorced or recently moved out of the house or going to college. That's not to say all of them, but I would say the majority are looking for some transition.
DN: How much do you do in order to make sure that both sides are safe when they do sign an agreement?
DM: We do an application for both sides and we do reference checks and then background checks. And then it's either maybe a phone call interview or coming into the office and seeing someone face-to-face before I bring them to a provider's home.
DN: What do you like about the job? And what are the biggest challenges?
DM: What I like about the job is when it works. There's been some really beautiful stories of people on the verge of homelessness or divorced dads being closer to their families.
One in particular, a woman in her 70s who often would be forgetting things and needed reminders for her medications and also is pretty lonely. She'd been living alone at her place for 20 years and she had really friendly neighbors. The neighbors would come over and they would help her with her finances or help her with chores around the house or another neighbor helped with maintenance things if she needed something fixed or a light bulb changed. The neighbors contacted me to try to find someone to share the space and we found someone. That was really heartwarming, because it was getting to the point where she couldn't be on her own unless someone else was there, you know, a few hours a week. And so situations like that. I was like, oh yeah, this feels like we're doing good.
DN: Any thought about trying to export this to other north Idaho communities, Sandpoint or Kellogg or Moscow?
DM: Yes, absolutely. The board and some other investors at HomeShare are looking at how do we do a franchise model so that we can replicate what we're doing here, specifically in Bonner County. do get calls from people from Sandpoint being like, "Hey, do you have providers or seekers up here?" I Just got one yesterday. They were like, "Yeah, I have this beautiful space with multiple rooms." And I'm like, I don't know if it would be stretching me way too thin to match it.
But we know that the need is in other places. And so, yeah, we'd love to develop a franchise or build out our site so we could support other areas that want to do HomeShare.
