The Missing Middle: Where Do We Live Between 55 and 80?

The most important home you'll ever build may not be the one you own—but the community you choose to share it with.

The first large retirement communities in America were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when developers like Del Webb introduced places such as Sun City, Arizona. The idea was revolutionary: create neighborhoods where older adults could enjoy an active, low-maintenance lifestyle surrounded by peers.

And it made perfect sense...because sixty years ago, the average person moved into what was called a 55+ retirement community in their mid-60s (they were called 55+ communities because 1995 legislation gave favorable status to residential communities serving those 55 and older).

Today?

The average age of someone moving into senior living is roughly 83 to 85 years old—often after a health event, the loss of a spouse, or when independent living has become difficult. Retirement communities have increasingly become places people move to because they need support, rather than places they move into to build the next chapter of life.

That leaves a rather large gap.

If you’re 58, 67, or 74, healthy, curious, and craving community, where exactly are you supposed to live?

Not everyone wants a golf cart.

Not everyone needs assisted living.

What many people want is something surprisingly simple:

Belonging.

A recent New York Times article profiled older adults who are choosing to share homes with one another—not because they can’t afford to live alone, but because they no longer want to. They describe lower costs, yes, but also something harder to measure: companionship, laughter, shared meals, mutual support, and the comforting knowledge that someone else is home.

Then I watched a delightful video of U.K. women joyfully living together, and I had the same thought I’ve had for years:

Why is this still considered unconventional?

We’ve normalized living alone.

We’ve normalized loneliness.

Maybe it’s time to normalize intentional community.

I’ve often joked that America doesn’t just have a housing shortage—it has a belonging shortage.

We have millions of empty bedrooms.

We have millions of people eating dinner alone.

Those aren’t two separate problems.

They’re one opportunity.

Imagine neighborhoods designed not around age restrictions but around shared purpose.

Imagine homes where people have private bedrooms and even separate suites but shared kitchens, gardens, libraries, workshops, and dinner tables.

Imagine a “Golden Girls” model—not as a sitcom, but as a serious housing category.

The biggest housing innovation of the next twenty years may not be building more houses.

It may be helping more people share the ones we already have.

After all, the second half of life shouldn’t begin with isolation.

It should begin with community.

P.S. This Thursday from 1:30-2:30 pm PT, we’ll be creating an online video conversation about the variety of ways that we can live together after I make a presentation about the variety of MEA Homes initiatives from regenerative communities to Golden Girls shared housing to tiny homes and “parallel living” to fractional ownership homes. It’s a free event and, while it’s not exclusively focused on shared rental housing, I know we’ll have a number of Golden Girls-curious people on the call.