Information
HomeMatch Pima By Linda Travis , PCOA Home Sharing Coordinator
PCOA Event Policy *All participants at in-person event(s) will be required to wear masks and adhere to PCOA distancing and safety guidelines, regardless of vaccination status. To assure your safety and that of others, depending on the situation with COVID-19 in our community, an event may be canceled or changed from an in-person event to a virtual event. Once registered, you will be notified regarding any such changes, should they occur, and provided with information about how to join the virtual event and additional options. HomeMatch Pima is a home sharing program at Pima Council on Aging that will open later in 2022 and is designed to match home owners with home sharers. The program works collaboratively within the community to increase knowledge and access to home sharing options, including with Tucson Home Sharing, which focuses on providing information sessions on home sharing arrangements to the general community . We will then follow up with interested homeowners and provide more information about the next steps. Please note that HomeMatch Pima is not an emergency or crisis housing program. Do visit the PCOA website, Housing Resources Section , to learn of housing options currently available in Pima County. Please join us in honoring Maggie Kuhn, pioneer in home sharing. We also honor you, as successful aging is about being a pioneer and finding your own way. Enjoy your March and our early signs of spring! successful and that takes substantial time, thoroughness, and determination in the planning stages. Our home sharing pilot program was made possible through the generous support of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the City of Tucson, and we are grateful for their support! Once our program becomes operational, we will apply to NHSRC to be listed in their directory. We believe Kuhn would cheer us on for our pioneering work in home sharing! At this time in our program development, we are asking homeowners interested in learning more about the program to complete a brief interest form. (That form can be accessed through HomeSharing.pcoa.org). Please note that home owners must be age 60 or older to participate in our HomeMatch Pima program.
March is a time of many notable historical events and celebrations, such as Women’s History Month. For HomeMatch Pima, there is one visionary woman who we want to honor this month. In 1970, Maggie Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers. Kuhn began Gray Panthers as a response, in part, to her forced retirement at age 65. She worked tirelessly to raise awareness and combat age discrimination in employment settings. She also worked to raise awareness about the need to generate new, affordable options for housing across all generations. In 1980, she founded the National Shared Housing Resource Center (NSHRC). Interestingly, Kuhn herself engaged in home sharing and personally experienced its benefits. Fast forward to 2022, and Pima Council on Aging (PCOA) is working with NSHRC to begin a home sharing program that will open later in 2022. PCOA has greatly benefited from ongoing consultation with NSHRC member organizations across the country and looks forward to ongoing networking with NSHRC members. There are different models for home sharing, and we have learned that each program is so unique! HomeMatch Pima will focus on older adults as homeowners. Home sharers will include older adults as well as middle-aged and younger adults. Thus, our program will involve both intra-generational and inter-generational matches. Our vision for the program is to help older adults explore innovative models for aging in place in their homes and in their communities. For home owners, sharing their homes may be a great way to continue living in their home, to enjoy companionship and receive additional income through rent. For the home sharer, there is also an opportunity to enjoy companionship along with possible financial savings. As described by our colleagues who lead NSHRC programs, the home owner-home sharer relationships come in many shapes and sizes, and no two matches are alike. To our knowledge, HomeMatch Pima is the first home sharing program in Arizona. Thus, we are blazing a trail and learning so much about the legal, tax, and insurance implications to a degree not known by others. We want our program to be
March 2022, Never Too Late | Page 33
Pima Council on Aging
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker