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When Sandra Armbrust first moved from Massachusetts to Maine a few years ago, she ended up spending the initial part of the coronavirus pandemic living in her sister’s three-bedroom Northport home.
When it finally came time to move out and find a new place to live, she faced a struggle familiar to many people seeking housing in the midcoast: there are few affordable options available for those in need.
Ultimately, though, Armbrust discovered an advertisement posted in the Belfast Community Co-op, from a local homeowner who was seeking a roommate to live in her 10-bedroom waterfront property not far from downtown Belfast.
Intrigued, Armbrust reached out to the homeowner, Andree Bella. Now, four years later, Armbrust is still living there. She loves living with Bella and others who have rented rooms in her home, which can accommodate a total of five residents.
“A really positive part about living with a group of people [of this size] — there’s always someone there to help you with something,” said Armbrust, who is now 78.
That kind of communal living situation may be familiar to many younger Americans, who often seek out roommates to help defray the growing costs of living in communities across the country.
But as the midcoast and the rest of Maine deal with a shortage of affordable housing, a growing number of older citizens are considering it as well. That may be because they have unused space in their homes that they’re willing to share with others, or they themselves may want a place to rent, in a situation that could place them with roommates of many different ages, races, income levels and lifestyles.
More people in the region are starting to see its appeal, and there is now a web-based service called Nesterly that is helping homeowners in certain parts of the country to rent out spare rooms in their homes.
The program was established in 2019 and has since gained traction in several states across New England.
Renters may request that their hosts meet certain guidelines, including being LGBTQ-friendly or accepting of animals, according to former City Councilor Mike Hurley, who is helping to coordinate the program in Belfast.
One Belfast resident who uses Nesterly is Cara Harshman, who in 2023 helped to start a housing co-op, which is a group of people that splits the costs of buying and living in homes. She is part of that arrangement along with her young daughter Zinnia, and it has helped ease the challenges of finding housing in Waldo County.
Currently, Harshman and Zinnia live in a space with five other adults and three children. The co-op has committees in charge of different responsibilities, including food and upkeep of the grounds.
“We believe that living under one roof is the way to go, or what we really need right now, and it’s just our preference, so we’ve been doing that,” Harshman said. “For a year and a half, we have had shared governance, so we make all decisions together.”
Communal living is now a familiar arrangement for Bella, who posted the ad for housing that Armbrust found. While she is not part of a formal service, Bella has lived with more than 100 roommates over the last 25 years.
Now in her 70s, she started out renting space in her home after a divorce, when she had two young children. She did not have enough income to take care of them, but she was left with the spacious Belfast home, in which she started taking roommates.
Now, renters have the option to stay as long as they wish, although Bella requests a minimum of four months. She charges from $750 to $900 per month — a steal compared to the average rent of $1,800 per month for all properties in Belfast currently listed on Zillow.
While Bella does not require her renters to sign leases, she does have a few rules, including that they must pay their rent on time, give 30 days of notice before moving out and keep the kitchen area clean. All applicants must send three references before moving forward in the process, and Bella does not rent to couples or families.
“If someone had told me 25 years ago that I would be living this way, I would’ve said, ‘No, that’s not me, you have the wrong person,’” Bella said. “But now, I can’t imagine living any other way. I would never want to live in this great big house all by myself.”
