Nesterly Intergenerational Homesharing

Now 74, Kamine has since moved with her husband to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they rent out their third-floor bedroom primarily to folks at Harvard University. With her children grown up and moved out, Kamine sometimes asks that her guests help out around the house. “Food shopping, gardening—just little things—helping with computer glitches,” she says. “Definitely computer stuff.”

Nesterly, a new platform that pairs older homeowners with young renters, is riding a wave of interest in multigenerational living. Brenda Atchison’s home in the Boston suburb of Roxbury has been in her family since 1946, and she’s lived there for nearly her entire life. At 66 years old, she’s an empty nester–she describes her house as rooms that are collecting dust.

Lifelong Cambridge resident Susan Richards has never lived with a stranger. She’s shared her home with her children for just over 20 years, and even in her twenties, she always lived with friends. But recently, the 54-year-old received a new roommate: a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard—and a total stranger.