Make An Impact Podcast
Make An Impact Podcast
Free Accommodation Meets Companionship: The Win-Win Solution for Housing and Loneliness
What happens when a spare bedroom becomes the solution to both loneliness and housing affordability? Lucie Cunningham reveals the life-changing power of intergenerational home sharing in this thought-provoking conversation.
After witnessing elderly clients spending 21 hours alone each day in her home care work, Lucie founded THE HomeShare, a social enterprise that matches older homeowners with younger people seeking affordable accommodation. The concept creates a beautifully balanced relationship where elderly participants offer free housing while receiving companionship and practical support in return. "They become buddies, they become friends," Lucie explains, "and they both appreciate each other because they both need each other."
The impact is extraordinary. Eighty-three percent of elderly participants, whose average age is 87, report a greater sense of purpose. Hospital admissions drop by 42%, and falls decrease by 50%. One 103-year-old participant proclaimed that instead of "sitting in a nursing home waiting to die," she was enabling a young person to attend university. Meanwhile, younger participants gain affordable housing, with half eventually saving enough to purchase their own homes.
Beyond these direct benefits, home sharing creates ripple effects throughout communities. Family members visit "because they want to, not because they have to." Neighbours feel reassured. Healthcare systems experience reduced demand. The arrangement preserves dignity and independence while maximizing underutilized housing stock.
Despite proven success and a potential €1.53 return on investment for every euro spent, home sharing still struggles for governmental recognition. Lucie attributes this to fear of the unfamiliar, though THE HomeShare's robust safeguarding processes have prevented any significant issues across hundreds of matches.
Connect with Lucie via thehomeshare.ie or explore global options through homeshareinternational.org.
Hi, I'm Heidi Fisher, the host of the Make an Impact Podcast. I'm an impact measurement expert, passionate about helping you make a bigger impact in the world by maximising the impact your services have.
I can help you to measure, manage and communicate the impact you have better to funders, investors, commissioners and other stakeholders, and to systemise your data collection and analysis so that it frees up time and doesn't become an additional burden.
I love helping you to measure social and economic impacts, including Social Return on Investment or value for money assessments, as part of understanding the change you make to peoples' lives.
You can get in touch via LinkedIn or the website makeanimpactcic.co.uk if you'd like to find out more about working with me.
I bring you inspiring conversations with change makers, social entrepreneurs and thought leaders who are making a difference. Whether you're looking to boost your impact measurement, learn from innovative projects or find fresh ideas to transform your work, you're in the right place. Welcome to today's episode of the Make an Impact podcast. Today, I'm joined by Lucie. Lucie, would you like to introduce yourself to the guests, please?
Speaker 2:Yes, my name is Lucie Cunningham. I am based in Ireland and I'm the founder and the CEO of a social enterprise not-for-profit called THE HomeShare.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and could you tell us what THE HomeShare does?
Speaker 2:I would love to we match people of different generations to live together for mutual benefit. So typically an older person who might be living on their own. They may be feeling a bit vulnerable, a bit nervous. They may be feeling lonely or socially isolated. Their family generally are quite nervous that they might be living on their own, so they offer free accommodation to somebody younger than them, usually a professional, who is either struggling with the cost of accommodation or they want to save up to buy their own home.
Speaker 1:So they live together for mutual benefit or they want to save up to buy their own home. So they live together for mutual benefit. Wow, it's like me living with my children. There's no mutual benefit. I was going to say the benefit is on their side, maybe. Yeah, exactly. So how did you?
Speaker 2:come up with this idea. I always say, unfortunately, I can't take credit for the idea. The idea of home sharing started in America over 50 years ago by this amazing lady called Maggie Kuhn who was involved in a movement called the Grey Panthers, and it was a movement in America which was, I suppose, like the suffragettes maybe in the UK, trying to get more rights for women, and then it snowballed onto intergenerational living and cohabitation. So I heard about home sharing about 10 years ago on a radio interview and because at the time I worked in the home care sector. I enabled older people with carers coming into them every day to help them with their personal care needs and a bit of company and help around the house, but these people were on their own for 21 hours of the day.
Speaker 2:So when I heard about this model, THE HomeShare, I thought that's absolutely perfect. That's going to fill a massive gap and a massive void. So I went off and did a lot of research. I went out to the UK actually, and met with a lady called Elizabeth Mills. She is the chair of a charity called HomeShare International. So I met with Elizabeth, who was very generous with her experience and her advice, and I met a couple of Home home share programs in the UK as well and I put the idea up my sleeve for a few years and got a bit of money together and I took a big leap of faith. I left my full-time job and set up THE HomeShare.
Speaker 1:I love the journey there and I love the fact that you're quite different to a lot of social entrepreneurs, where they don't take that giant leap of faith. They do it gradually as wean themselves out of their full time job and into their social enterprise. So you were obviously feeling very confident about this choice.
Speaker 2:I was, and I remember at the time saying to some people, and even to this day, and I wouldn't recommend this to anybody, I was just a bit crazy enough to do it. But I always said to myself there is no plan B, because I was that confident that it was going to work and I was that passionate about it. I was like a dog with a bone. I still am. Yeah, this is going to work, and I'm going to keep hounding the Irish government and the HSE until either they get a borrowing order out on me or we collaborate. It's all or nothing.
Speaker 2:My granddad had passed away and he had left a little bit of money to my children. So I said to my children can I borrow that money please, which I have, actually, I have paid it back eventually. So, yeah, it was all or nothing. I had to give it a hundred percent. I couldn't do a full-time job and do this in the background. I had to throw myself into it. So, look, I was very lucky that I did have a little bit of money behind me, that I could sustain that for a few months. And, yeah, so luckily it paid off. And look, obviously we are not for profit. So obviously, all the we pays the income we generate. Basically, it pays for us to continue, pays our salaries and pays for us to continue to work the next question I have, then, is about the last eight years.
Speaker 1:What's been the biggest achievement for you over that eight year period? Do?
Speaker 2:you know, I think the thing that I love and we often hear it every day is, I suppose home sharing eight, 10 years ago was unknown in Ireland. It's still quite unknown in the UK as well, but it's so great that if myself and my colleagues are talking to someone, they'll say, oh, I heard about home sharing. Or if we're having a conversation with someone you know on the street and for some reason, we speak about home sharing, they'll say, oh, yeah, we know about that. So it's oh, my god, that's amazing like the word is getting out there. I suppose one achievement I was happy with was, on a bigger scale, was I presented the concept to the Irish government in 2017 and within about 15 months, the Irish government had written home sharing international policy. I think it was just good timing because the government were writing a policy on housing options for older people, so I think it was quite timely.
Speaker 2:But honestly, I think my greatest if I was to look back at our greatest achievement it's every day when we speak to our householders, as we call them generally the older person, or it could be somebody who is living with a disability, either a physical disability or an intellectual disability. So when we talk to them and we visit them every month in their homes. So when we speak to them or the sharers, and just hearing from them firsthand the difference that home sharing has made to their lives, that for us will always be our greatest satisfaction. Out of that, and it's so humbling and just for us to be a small part of that is it's amazing, it makes us, it gives us the feels every day that keeps us going to want. That's why, if the number of people we have who home share, it's sustaining our salaries, it's like we want to keep going and get bigger and bigger.
Speaker 1:Not to get bigger, but to help more as many people as possible yeah, it's all about the impact, the difference that you make into people's lives, so it's really good to hear that that it's you're still very grounded in the day-to-day and that's the most important thing yeah, because we get phone calls every day from families who are burnt out.
Speaker 2:Usually they're working full-time and they just feel like they're being pulled in every direction. And I was the exact same myself. My dad lived with dementia and I was always worried about him living on his own. Because I was worried about him when I was at work and, of course, I was working full-time and I was very much a single mum and I felt like I wasn't giving 100% to anything. When I was at home, I was worrying about my dad. When I was at work, I was worrying about the children and it was just, and, of course, thinking about yourself.
Speaker 2:You come way down the pecking order as an individual when we speak to family members, like even a couple of hours ago I was speaking with the lady and her mom is living with dementia and the family they're all taking turns. So the amazing thing about home sharing is that suddenly family members they visit their parents because they want to visit them, not because they have to. They have to check in or they have to go to the shops for them, or they have to put the bins out each week, and so it's as if they're going back 10 years when their parents were more independent, to go to the shops for them or they have to put the bins out each week, and so it's as if they're going back 10 years when their parents were more independent. But I think the real beauty for me? There are so many benefits, but one huge benefit, beauty and benefit for us is that 83% of our householders, whose average age is about 87, but 83% of them have told us that since they home shared, since they opened up their home to somebody they have 83% have a greater sense of purpose in their life. Now, which is amazing.
Speaker 2:I was telling a group of people yesterday the oldest householder we had was 103. She was telling me that at my age I should be in a nursing home in a rocking chair waiting to die, but instead I'm still at home in my own home and I am enabling a younger person to go to university because I'm giving them free accommodation. So basically it's mutually beneficial. So the older person or the person who lives in the home they offer free accommodation and in return, the younger person offers 10 hours a week of company help around the house, shopping, going off, getting their nails done, going to the cinema.
Speaker 2:We had a match, who went to japan on holiday together last year, and they might go on weekends away. So they become buddies, they become friends and they both appreciate each other because they both need each other. But the older person needs or wants the younger person there in case they had an accident or had a fall at night time, they're not going to be lying on their bedroom floor for 12 hours until they're found. And then the younger person they get affordable, cheap accommodation so that they can either save money for their own home or they can save up to do the masters that they wanted to do, or save up to go traveling the world. So they both have something that they need, but something they can offer in return amazing it just.
Speaker 2:It sounds so simple and yet so few people do it I know it's because maybe 40 years ago there was always a granny or a granddad in the house. Always when the children came home from school there was always a granny or a granddad in the house. Always when the children came home from school there was the older adult there and there was that intergenerational cohabitation and everybody really gains a lot from that. It keeps the older person young, it gives the younger person empathy and insight into what life is like when they get older. But because cost of living now most people have to go to work so there's nobody at home anymore. A lot of people, even we see it a lot of older people. Now their children may have had to emigrate or there might be first generation Irish in Ireland and they don't. They've never met their grandparents. So that relationship between the younger generation and older generation is often missing in modern society definitely as I'm very much into impact measurements.
Speaker 1:So my next question is how do you measure your impact? I know you've mentioned there about 83% had an increased sense of purpose, so there must be some way that you've tracked and measured that. I'm quite interested to know how you're measuring all your impacts, because there's a huge amount for each of the younger people, the older people, the family members, etc. So we'd love to hear more about what you do yeah.
Speaker 2:So at the moment, until we hopefully get some meaty research done, we are doing good old surveys Now. We also have a CRM system that we track people if they had a fall or if they've had a hospital admission. We conduct a survey towards the end of every year as part of our annual report. If anyone is interested, all of our annual reports are on our website. But we conduct a survey and we ask so many questions on the survey. For example, why did you want to home share in the first place? How many? Or have your falls decreased since you started home sharing? Have your falls decreased since you started home sharing? Because we know from research in Ireland that people who live with somebody else are 44 percent. The risk of a fall is 44 percent less if they don't live on their own. We also asked them how many times they've been admitted to hospital. We also asked them how many times they've been admitted to hospital. And then we asked them how satisfied they are with their life now since they started home sharing. And then, as you rightly said, yet we also have very different questions for the sharers. So some of our stats then, just from last year, as I mentioned, 83% of our householders said they have a greater sense of purpose. 50% have had less falls. 42% have had less hospital admissions. 100% of them told us they have a greater sense of happiness, basically since they started home sharing.
Speaker 2:We also ask our home share participants for testimonials because we always say I could tell you home sharing. We also ask our home share participants for testimonials because we always say I could tell you home sharing is the best thing since sliced bread. I could tell you the grass is blue and you go oh, okay. So we always encourage people to write testimonials on Google so that people can read for themselves from people who have home shared. All that feedback is amazing as well. People say oh my God, it's changed everything. It's mom or dad wants to stay at home. They don't want to move into long-term care. So thank you for enabling this. 50% of our sharers have told us that they have saved money and they've moved on to buy their own forever home or they're in the process of it.
Speaker 2:It's all on our annual report, but that's a very kind of crude way for us to quantify the impact. But until we can get proper meaty stats and research done, that's what we're doing, also based on the reduction in falls and hospital admissions, we have our return on investment. So for every euro the the government if they do, and hopefully they will but for every euro the government puts into home share, they would get 1 euro 53 return on investment. And that's not even including the use of emergency services. That's not including the reduction in social isolation and loneliness. It's not including the reduction of payments that the government make to people who are on low income and need assistance with their housing. So that's the very, very minimum and that's purely based on hospital admissions and falls and nothing else wow, yeah, I can see that there's a lot of benefits there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see that there's a lot of economic value for the government there. Just like you're saying about the health services and there's so much in there and there's a lot of data out there around. If you reduce loneliness, then people have better health as well, and then you've got all the housing benefits on top of it in terms of people actually being able to have their own home and the impact that then has on the rental sector and different things.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and even, like the circular economy, underutilized homes, like 67 percent of Irish homes are underutilized. So there's a lot of houses in Ireland where you know there was just one person living there, especially because in Ireland I suppose because of our past home ownership is a huge thing. In Ireland, say, on the continent, it's not people rent, whereas in Ireland I think in the UK as well owning your own home is a big thing. So when people's children fly the nest and if a spouse passes away, there's just one person left and they don't want to move. They don't want to move from their neighbors or their community.
Speaker 2:And I always think in Ireland at the moment that there's a big push on what they're calling right-sizing, basically downsizing. That's not a good thing, in my opinion, after the age of 70, because we see it for people who've been living in the same house for 60 years and they might have a diagnosis of dementia or cognitive impairment and they don't even recognize their own house even after 60 years. So what chance do they have if they move house? They wouldn't know the neighborhood. So it is important for people to stay living in their own home and I suppose to give them that option, the affordable option and the dignity to make the choice that they want to make and stay living in the house, where there are marks on the wall, where they measure their children's heights over the years, all those little things. But then obviously, the clever thing would be to make use of the empty bedrooms for their benefit.
Speaker 1:In terms of really showcasing what the whole model and the social enterprise is delivering for the entire community because the average age of our sharers is actually 40.
Speaker 2:So anne moves in with mary, who's 87. But it's not just those two people that it benefits. It benefits mary's family because they're not worrying about her. It obviously benefits anne and maybe even Mary's family because they're not worrying about her. It obviously benefits Anne and maybe even Anne's family. But it also benefits the neighbours, because suddenly the neighbours don't have to worry about Mary, who's 87 and living on her own and she's had a couple of falls. And how will we know if Mary is on the floor? Suddenly the neighbours are like, oh, this is brilliant, this is fantastic, it has that ripple effect. And then it's great. Great obviously for the local GP, because Mary isn't going to be visiting as much, and the local hospital. It has that ripple effect.
Speaker 1:In terms of future plans, what would you like to see happen for THE HomeShare?
Speaker 2:I would love to see home share as like a household name, like home care is. 30 years ago, home care wasn't really a thing. It was really down to families, whereas now a lot of people have carers popping in. So I would like to see home care or, sorry, home sharing as being recognized as an absolutely viable option not for everybody, but for a lot of people and for the government to put the same amount of resources and support into home sharing as they do with other housing or even social care support. In the UK there are maybe 20 home share programmes. There are about 20 countries around the world that have home share programmes. There's a charity based in the UK called Home Share International, and I've been very lucky enough to have been accepted onto the Board of Trustees. So we're always looking for recognition from the different governments and from Europe that home sharing is really a very safe, affordable option that governments really need to consider.
Speaker 1:Why do you think they don't back it more?
Speaker 2:I think they're afraid. I think they're afraid of it's new although it's not new it's 50 years old and home sharing has been in the UK for over 25 years but I think they're worried that it's relatively new for them and they're afraid. I think in a lot of people's heads, the safeguarding what happens if something goes wrong and the person won't leave I think that's the biggest thing. I think they're afraid that if they say to people, oh, maybe look into THE HomeShare and then if there is an issue or a problem, the country will turn around and say, well, you're the one who supported this. And look what happened to my mom, which is totally understandable. But obviously we have safeguarding policies and processes in place to minimize that.
Speaker 2:We have never had a case where there has been a safeguarding issue against the person we have had and look, we're nothing but transparent. We have had, I'd say, five cases out of 500 where we have had to ask the sharer to leave because they broke the rules For one person, because they had an overnight guest in, which is not allowed. One person broke that rule and they were gone. They literally didn't stay another night in the house and then a couple of other times where sharers came back drunk again breaking the rules. But they know the rules before they enter into it. In my experience with home sharing and working in the home care sector, home sharing is a lot safer because the person who moves in, they build a relationship with the person they live with.
Speaker 2:The person becomes like their granny or their granddad and they build up a really special bond and they know if they mess up they're back paying a thousand a month in rent. Not that that's the reason why they don't break the rules, but it's just another layer of listen. You have a really good deal here. Don't mess it up. But obviously they don't want to. They built a really strong relationship and usually if a householder does move to long-term care or if they pass away generally nine times out of ten the family say to the sharer do you know what? We are so appreciative of you. You enabled mom or dad to stay at home. We are so happy for you to stay living in the house until the house is sold. We've had sharers who've been over a year living in the house after the person wasn't there because they built up that relationship with the family as well amazing, absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:Where can people find out more about THE HomeShare?
Speaker 2:so we are all over social media and generally THE HomeShare. So the is generally in caps and that's because it's an acronym for together helping each other. So it's together helping each other, but THE HomeShare our website is thehomeshare. ie, and they can find us on instagram, twitter, linkedin, facebook, a little bit on tiktok, although I'm allergic to it so, so you're pretty much everywhere, pretty much everywhere. I think we even have a channel on YouTube, but I don't really use that. We're going to have to start.
Speaker 1:You'd get some really good video testimonials, I think.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and we were very lucky. A few years ago, virgin Media they did a five-part TV series about us called I wasn't too keen on the name, but they called it OAP B&B. But they can find people can find those episodes on our website under the media section as well. It's just get the tissues out because it's it is and they actually did. They used it on Google Box as well. Actually, it it was really cool. Oh, amazing but it's just laugh out loud, get the tissues out kind of TV. It's fabulous.
Speaker 1:So you're famous.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I wouldn't say that at all. Thankfully I wasn't in front of the camera. I was behind the camera because nobody would have tuned in otherwise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you never know, next time it'll be you in front of the camera.
Speaker 2:Maybe is there anything else that you would like to share before we finish the other thing is we have another option as well, called help for housing, because we had so many people who were coming to us who worked nights like nurses, doctors, police, and they couldn't commit to being in the house overnight. So we are so bespoke that people it's like an a la carte menu. People can pick and choose so that every home share arrangement is totally bespoke to them. But look, anyone who is interested in home sharing, I would encourage them to go on to another website, homeshareinternationalorg. Like I said, homeshare International is like the voice of home share. Or they could go on to this website and see is there a local home share program in their own country.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Thank you so much, Lucie. It's been really lovely talking to you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Heidi, for having me. I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Make an Impact podcast. I hope you found today's conversation as inspiring and thought-provoking as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who want to create positive change. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and learn more about my work at makeanimpactciccouk. Until next time, let's keep making an impact in the world.