Shared housing options when you are raising children on your own
Raising children on one income means rent often takes the largest share of what you earn. Sharing a home is one of the few ways to cut that cost by a large amount fairly quickly, and it also puts another adult in the house.
This page covers the main ways single mothers find shared housing: homeshare programs that accept single parents, sharing a home with another mother, and shared homes run by an agency. It also covers how to check any arrangement before you move your children into it.
Homeshare programs that accept single parents
A homeshare program is a service, usually run by a nonprofit or a government agency, that matches a person who has extra room in their home with a person who needs housing. Staff review applications on both sides, and many programs check references and run background checks before anyone is matched. The NHPB guide to how home sharing works explains the arrangement in full.
Single parents are among the people many of these programs serve. Some state-run matching services name single parents directly in their eligibility rules, and independent nonprofit programs in many communities take applications from mothers with children.
One question to ask before anything else is whether the program places families with children at all. Some homes in these programs are adult-only, so the age and number of your kids will affect which matches are possible.
To look for a program where you live, the national directory at https://www.nationalsharedhousing.org/program-directory lists nonprofit homesharing programs by state. The NHPB guide to locating a homeshare program covers the other routes, including agencies on aging and state-run services.
Sharing a home with another single mother
Some mothers skip the programs and join with another single mother instead. Two mothers share one home, split the rent and the utility bills, and trade help with the children, so each of them gets time that a mother living alone rarely gets.
Most of these arrangements start with someone already in your life. A friend going through a divorce at the same time, a sister, a mother from school or church, or a name that comes up when you tell people what you are looking for.
These households can work very well, and they can also go wrong in ways that are hard on children, so the details deserve real care. A separate page, the NHPB guide to mommunes and shared households for single mothers, covers how to set one up: what to agree on before moving in, how to handle the money, and what to put in writing.
Shared homes run by an agency
There is a third form of shared housing, where the home itself belongs to a program. A nonprofit or housing agency manages a house or small building, each person or family rents a private bedroom or two, and everyone shares the kitchen and common rooms.
Some of these shared residences are set up for single-parent families, and a few operate as transitional housing, which means a family stays for a set period while working toward a permanent place. Support services, such as help from a case manager, may be part of the arrangement.
These homes are not common, and openings tend to be limited. Local housing agencies, community action agencies, and the directory above are the places to ask whether one operates in your area.
Checking an arrangement when your children will live there
Whatever form the housing takes, the person you match with, and everyone else in that household, will be around your children every day. That is the standard to check against, and it is higher than the one you would use for an ordinary roommate.
When a program does the matching, ask exactly what was checked and about whom. A background check on the mother you match with tells you nothing about an adult son who also lives in the home, so ask whether every adult in the household was screened.
When you arrange things yourself, slow the process down. Meet more than once, and meet in public before you meet at anyone's home. Have the children meet and watch how that goes before any decision is made.
Call references yourself, and try to reach at least one person who can speak to how this person behaves around children. Talk plainly about the things that cause fights later: discipline, screen time, food, bedtimes, guests, and who watches whose kids and when.
Then put the whole arrangement in writing. The agreement should cover each person's share of the rent and the bills, the household tasks, the help with the children each of you is and is not offering, and how much notice either of you must give to end it.
If anything about a person or a home feels wrong to you, keep looking. Your judgment about who belongs around your children is worth trusting.
If the real problem is this month's rent
Shared housing takes time to arrange, whether a program does the matching or you do it yourself. It is a way to lower your housing costs going forward, and it will not solve an emergency that is due this week.
If you are behind on rent right now, or you have no income at all, start with the NHPB guide to rental assistance programs for single mothers. There are also organizations that give money for other needs, and the NHPB guide to grants for helping single mothers covers those.
Programs that serve single parents differ in who they accept, what they check, and what they charge, and those details change without notice. Confirm everything directly with a program before you apply or share information about your family.
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