Transcript | Ep. 92: How to Live Single, Pt. 2: IRL Golden Girls

Caroline: From your point of view, is the Golden Girls dream achievable?

Pat: Well, Golden Girls were rich, right? The other things about the Golden Girls is it was a comedy show. Right. This is just life.

[Theme music]

Caroline: Cristen, the voice we just heard was Pat Dunn, an IRL Golden Girl who founded a group called Senior Ladies Living Together.

Cristen: But Caroline, while Pat is right that the show is a sitcom, Dorothy and the girls actually weren't rich.

Caroline: Cristen, are you well, actually-ing the Golden Girls??

Cristen: I am! But as a friend

[Golden Girls theme song clip]
“Thank you for being a friend…”

Cristen: So look, even though the show was on in the early 90s and centers around the women's friendships and very active dating lives, it also spoke to a lot of issues that Pat and her Senior Ladies Living Together are dealing with today.

Caroline: I imagine you mean more than just whose turn it is to buy the cheesecake

Cristen: Yeeeah — a lot of the show also revolves around their money-making schemes and figuring out how to make ends meet. Like, in one episode, we find out that Rose's husband lost all their retirement savings before he died. And in a later season, the Miami housing authority cracks down on them for having too many renters under one roof, so Blanche puts the other three women's names on the house deed so they can stay put.

Caroline: Cristen, you mentioned in our last episode that you've been watching Golden Girls and taking notes, and clearly you weren't kidding! Today, listeners, in part two of our three-parter on living single, we're turning our attention to single women living together —both young AND old — and why they need to in the first place.

Pat: I'm a widow. My husband died about five years ago and I'm living with two other senior women like me that I met in the group that I started.

Cristen: What are the relationship statuses of of your two roommates?

Pat: Both single, one has been single her entire life and the other one had several relationships, two marriages and is divorced, I suppose you could say. After a certain time you don't even think of yourself as divorced, but just single. Yeah.

Cristen: So y'all are a little little variety pack.

Pat: Yeah, yeah, we are.

Caroline: Pat started Senior Ladies Living Together in Ontario, Canada after she found herself suddenly single in her mid-60s with no safety net. Later this episode, she’s going to give us a Golden Girls reality check and shed some light on why millions of senior single ladies are looking for roommates.

Cristen: And that real estate squeeze can start well before your golden years - especially if you have kids. When our first guest, Ashley Simpo, ended up single at the same time as her close friend and fellow mom, Tia, she and Tia both realized they had a housing crisis to solve.

Ashley: It was a breakup. It was a breakup on my end and Tia's at the same time. And had to have one of those panic moments where especially in a city like New York, you're like, how the fuck am I going to pay rent if I don't get to split it with someone?

Caroline: So Ashley decided to split an apartment — and childcare duties — with Tia. She’s going to tell us all about that experience of co-mothering, co-housing, and why it truly takes a village to raise a child and take care of yourself at the same time.

Cristen: All to find out: what happens when women live single, together?

[Stinger]

Caroline: Cristen, last episode we talked about how expensive singlehood can be, and rent is one of the worst money pits. For example, you know, me having to move back in with my parents after my last breakup before having to find a roommate. But if you’re single and a mom like our guest Ashley Simpo? Figuring out whether and where to live single gets way more complicated.

Ashley: I couldn't just get up and leave even even though eventually that was like my bottom of the line, last resort was just go back to California and live with my mom. But that wasn't really a viable option. I had to figure something out. And I think, unfortunately, I think for a lot of women, that option would have been to stay in an undesirable situation and then possibly abusive one. And it happens a lot.

Cristen: When Ashley and her ex-boyfriend ended things a few years ago, she had to find a place for herself and her then 5-year-old son to live — in Brooklyn, where the median rent is $3000.

Ashley: It was like me after work going to look at apartments and, you know, being told sometimes by landlords and not a very direct way that they don't want to rent to a mom. Because, you know, I've heard comments like, “Well, it's a really quiet building, and we have a lot of single people who live here. Lots of couples, no kids.” You know, a lot of discouraging language. And it was really kind of gross. So, yeah, it was unfun, to say the least. It was - it was a shitstorm.

Caroline: Ashley's friend of 10 years named Tia was going through a similar shitstorm. Tia had just gotten divorced, and her two sons were 3 and 13 at the time

Cristen: Both women were commiserating about how hard it is to find an affordable living situation as single moms. Like, Ashley could’ve moved to a cheaper side of town, but her son was already enrolled in the neighborhood school, and she felt invested in the community around her. At the same time, she knew there was no way she could afford a place there on her own.

Caroline: Tia, meanwhile, was still living in her pre-divorce apartment, but no longer had two incomes to cover the rent. So the ladies got to talking...

Ashley: And so it's literally two newly single moms with children, all boys, by the way, um talking about the same problem. So it was a very like it was like a light bulb moment where we were like, well, what about. Because she had an extra room in her apartment and a three bedroom apartment. So it was also just it made sense, like space-wise, too. And I will say honestly, I mean, both of us were kind of in desperate situations. So even if that wasn't like the first thing that we would do, normally, it seemed like the obvious - it seemed like the obvious thing to do.

Cristen: They decided that Ashley and her son would move into Tia’s apartment. They would divvy up the rent and expenses and childcare duties. And it seemed like a no-brainer, even though Ashley said she’d never seen similar setups

Ashley: If you could you could have a roommate, then why wouldn't you have a roommate as a parent, if you're a single parent, especially, you know, like I said, in an expensive city. And it's kind of weird. Like, I don't know why that's not more common. But I do know that women and mothers have always been prone to sharing resources and being communal when it comes to raising their kids. I think maybe our generation has distanced from that a little bit. But, you know, I saw my mom and my grandmother and my aunts sharing resources and helping each other out, which is of the same vein, really. Ashley [00:11:12] So there was a lot of checking in and letting each other know like what was going on. There were times where, you know, if she had a meeting that ran long. I went and got her youngest from daycare or if I needed groceries and she was going to the grocery store, I would give her my list, and she would, you know, get the things that I needed, although we shared a lot of groceries, you know, different diets, there's different things on the list.

Caroline: Well so what was the dynamic like, parenting all the kids together?

Ashley: There are there was a bit of a difference in the way that we would like you know, I'm a little bit more, I think, strict with my son than she - I don't like the word strict, but just a little bit more of like a micromanager, I guess. And she's a little bit more of like a free range parent. And I think we have a lot of we have a lot of similarities there. But that was one thing that was a little different. So there were times where it was like I wouldn't necessarily let my son get away with something. But she found the value in allowing her child to explore. So it was a learning experience. I actually kind of learned a few things myself in terms of just kind of letting go. And I think that there were times where my take on things was beneficial, too, because I see a need for more structure sometimes.

Caroline: Ashley says another major benefit of their arrangement was simply living with another single mom who understood both the joys and the struggles she was navigating.

Ashley: It was a huge relief to be able to turn to another woman, another Black mother who understands what life feels like and say, oh, my God, I had such a day. And then, you know, after the boys are asleep, we go and do a couple of shots of vodka. You know what I mean, like and chill for a minute and decompress. There was a backyard of that apartment, and so we would just go outside and just kind of hang out and relax. And that's something that I never had. I wouldn't have gotten that with a male partner, and I wouldn't have gotten that with just a roommate that doesn't have kids. It was a very specific type of support that I just didn't even know could exist in, like the home setting.

Cristen: Once she and Tia had settled into their new living situation, Ashley wrote about it for the Huffington Post. The essay went viral, and Ashley heard from a TON of other Black single moms who were also feeling crushed by the lack of affordable housing, on top of the racist stigmas they already face as both Black women and single mothers in the US.

Ashley: You know, if you were raised in a city and you work in a city and your kids go to school in the city, then how come you can't afford to live in the city? It gets really deep because this goes into like systemic issues around housing and around access. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of single women who are raising families and who are homeless, mostly affecting Black women, Black mothers. There's a lot of unfairness around the way that the neighborhoods are being gentrified and the rent is going up. I don't see a lot of housing with families in mind. And that cuts a lot of us out of the equation.

Caroline: Rising rents, gentrification, and Airbnb properties have only accelerated urban housing shortages across the country, which disproportionately affect Black single moms. That’s why groups like Moms 4 Housing in Oakland, California, are pushing for vacant homes to be sold to community trusts instead of predatory real estate companies.

Cristen: That model breaks with the white American ideal of suburban, single-family home life. Instead, it echoes the communal caregiving that sociologist Patricia Hill Collins calls 'other-mothering' — which she defines as the way Black moms often care and watch out for all the neighborhood kids.

Caroline: 'Other-mothering' also resonates with Ashley and Tia's cohousing and co-parenting arrangement, which lasted for eight months until Ashley got her own place with her son.

Caroline: Being on the other side of all of this now, would you live with another single mom and her kids again?

Ashley: I would. I definitely would, because I really like the companionship element. And I actually think that I'm I'm somebody who's I'm really into, like, the idea of communal living, honestly. But I think that with respect to space and preference and all of that, it would have to be in a situation that was not borne out of desperation and really more set up the right way. Maybe with a larger space or something that has like, you know, maybe a common area, but very separate living spaces where we can share a lot of the responsibilities, but we still have our own - we can kind of still kind of maintain our own cosmos, if you will. So I would do it again in a heartbeat. The situation would have to be approached the right way. And I think I'd also be really careful about dynamics and, you know, going into it and mental health and all those other things. But yeah, no, I definitely would.

Caroline: Can I ask, did did you ever watch Golden Girls?

Ashley: I love Golden Girls.

Caroline: OK. OK. I mean, I never want to assume if someone's watched Golden Girls. But anyway, which which Golden Girl would you be?

Ashley: Oh, my gosh. I feel like I'm all of them. I want to say Blanche. Blanche is the one who's like sexually like free, right.

Caroline: mhmm.

Ashley: So I would say that that's something that if anybody who knows me knows that that's something that I find to be very important. I actually feel like sex is self-care. And so, yeah, I would say I identify with her the most.

Cristen: When we come back, we talk to our IRL Golden Girl guest, Pat Dunn.

Caroline: Don’t go anywhere!

[Midroll ad 1]

Pat: It's just been over a year since the group started. I've got 1705 members, all single senior women, and it resonates with them. The idea that, you know, why not, why can't we have our autonomy? Why can't we decide where we want to live? We've made decisions for ourselves all of our lives. And a lot of times when you're poor, which most of the ladies in the group are, you lose a lot of those freedoms. You can't have it that way. So we're we're making our own way, finding our own way to make it all happen.

Cristen: We’re back with Pat Dunn, who founded the Ontario, Canada-based Facebook group Senior Ladies Living Together in 2019. And even though the group may sound like a Golden Girls dream come true, Pat's journey to starting Senior Ladies Living Together began when she found herself very suddenly single and literally adrift.

Pat: So I was 64, my husband was 66. We were traveling on our boat in the Caribbean because that was our retirement dream, and he died of a heart attack suddenly. I went in to wake him up I mean. I got up, made coffee and started breakfast and went back in to wake him up and he was dead. So I was stunned. Devastated. I don't know all the words you can find for that, but it was awful. And I had to over the next few months find out whether or not I could live financially on one income. Aside from all of the emotional loss-and-grief devastation, I was financially devastated.

Cristen: Pat tried to live off her retirement income, which wasn’t much. It took just a few years for her to start going deeply into debt trying to keep a roof over her head.

Pat: So the lowest point was when I was staying with my sister, sleeping on her couch because I couldn't afford anywhere to live. And I decided that I had to do something and try to get out of that debt I was in at least. So I went on my computer and I found a website to help me learn how to live safely in my car. And that was - still brings up a great deal of pain for me that moment, because, you know, I was a professional woman. I had had career. I'd had owned houses. I had, you know, at least middle-class lifestyle for my whole life. And now I was poor. So after I cried for a few hours and went to bed, I got up in the morning and said, OK, that's crazy. There's got to be a better way.

Caroline: That morning, Pat went online again — but this time, instead of trying to figure out how to live by herself in her car — she started a Facebook group to find out whether other women in the area were dealing with the same situation and might want to pool their resources ...

Pat: Well, after one week, I had 50 members. The next week, 50 more, 50 more, 50 more. Many are like me professional women, had good jobs all their lives. You know, it just isn't possible sometimes as a single mother, for instance, even though you might have a great job. How do you put some money away for retirement? It just it's not there. Not with the cost of living and helping your children. So that kind of thing, the emotions that came up was was the fear, the fear of homelessness was a constant refrain, knowing that they were so precariously housed, and many had already had experienced periods of homelessness where they had to live with friends or family or what we call couch surfing that sort of thing was - they'd already lived with that homeless feeling, if not reality.

Cristen: Pat wondered, why were so many of her peers pushed into post-retirement couch surfing? So, as a former public health nurse, Pat turned to research.

Pat: It's really quite astounding in Canada in 2016, 28 percent of single senior women were living in poverty. That's almost one in three. If you're a senior woman, you're more than twice as likely than a man, senior man, to be living alone. So once I started to learn some of these things I thought, “Well, no wonder everybody's coming to this. No wonder they're interested. Good grief. There's so many of us.”

Caroline: Cristen, that singlehood tax that we discussed last episode continues to take its toll later in life, too. In the US, more than a QUARTER of never-married women over 65 live below the poverty line— a bigger share than divorcees and widows combined. And for comparison, just FIVE percent of married women over 65 are in poverty.

Cristen: There's a lot of intersectional nuance within those stats as well. For instance, seniors with disabilities and LGBTQ seniors face steeper risks of poverty and homelessness. Within that group, lesbians, trans folks and queer people of color are especially vulnerable.

Caroline: And just like Ashley and Tia over the border in Brooklyn, for Pat and her Senior Ladies Living Together in Ontario, affordable housing was extremely hard to come by.

Pat: My homemate group and I found that we thought, well, it will we'll find something for around 2,000 a month and that'd be 500 each. And then we'd each have some money at the end of the month and do other things with. And this will be great. And we couldn't find a rental housing at all where we lived. We have a zero percent vacancy rate, and there just isn't anything.

Cristen: So, Pat got scrappy again. She befriended a real estate investor who loved the whole Senior Ladies Living Together concept and wanted to help. This was a huge break in Pat’s quest for stable, communal living.

Pat: She had a background with nonprofit organizations and looked at life from the nonprofit model. Although of course, she had to make money as an investor. But in any case, she she was right in line and and she ended up buying us a house, and we rent from her now. Plus, a bunch of investor friends of hers loved the idea, too. So they're offering to do that for other ladies in the group as well. So that kind of took the edge off that.

Caroline: Pat’s house, which she shares with two other women and a Welsh springer spaniel, became the first Senior Ladies Living Together success story

Cristen: One thing that I have noticed, you refer to these arrangements as homemates versus roommates, and I was just curious, why the distinction?

Pat: Well, it was funny because when we - when I first started the group, I kept thinking, well, what am I going to call - what are we going to call each other? And I didn't like the roommate thing because it suggests the separateness to me. So that didn't seem to fit. And then people started calling, saying the groups, the women in the group started saying “housemate.” But still wasn't doing it for me because it’s not all houses. I mean, it's not just about getting into a house. Maybe maybe a group will decide to to rent a condo, you know, an apartment, even. So are they’re all homes and that's what they hit me one day, but, oh, they're all homes. It's about finding a home, not a house. So. And building a home together. So that's when I started calling it homemates.

Caroline: So far, Senior Ladies Living Together has set up five homemate success stories, and four more homes are in the works.

Cristen: And it's a small number, yes, but the group members are there for more than finding potential homies.

Pat: What so many said to me and still do as they join the group. Oh, I feel so relieved, now I have hope. And so that's, you know, gratifying, of course. And and, you know, just wonderful. I marvel at them. I’m in awe a lot of the time at what they've lived with in their lives have managed to overcome. So then when they come and say, “Well, you're giving us hope Pat,” that's that's a pretty cool thing. So when I started the group, I did it for me. Now I do it for them.

Cristen: Caroline, can Pat be Unladylike’s fairy godmother??

Caroline: Bippity boppity boop - Yes, please!!

Cristen: Well when we come back, dearest Pat shares some advice on money and sisterhood

Caroline: Don’t y’all go away

[Midroll ad 2]

Caroline: We’re back with Founding Senior Lady of Senior Ladies Living Together, Pat Dunn.

Cristen: I wanted to go back and ask you about as a statistic you mentioned earlier, it was something along the lines of senior men being, what was it, twice as likely to be living with someone compared to senior women?

Pat: Yeah. 45 percent of senior women are living alone. This was in 2016, the last census that was taken. So it might be worse now. And only 24 percent of senior men live alone.

Cristen: Why - what explains that gender gap? I mean, is it is it life span?

Pat: Yeah

Cristen: Is it that men are likelier to immediately try to remarry, find another partner. What do you think that is?

Pat: Well, certainly a huge part of it is that men die younger than women. So like in my case. I was 64. My husband was only 66. So. So we are more likely to outlive our husbands. Also, I think there's the after that that if the some of the senior men have also are divorced or or widowed, could be. But they have a much bigger pool of people to find a second partner from. So that and then remember that men's retirement incomes are probably much higher because they've always made more money, you know, equal pay for equal work still hasn't happened. I don't know about it if it has in the states, that it certainly hasn't here. And so when I had a first marriage, a 30-year-long marriage, before I met my second husband and I was 50 ish when we separated and divorced, but he had 15 more years of, you know, making $200,000 a year to put money away. You know, I didn't make that much. And I couldn't put any more money away to more retirement.

Caroline: That kind of disparity — and generally living longer and wanting to age in place — is what’s driven about 4 million American women over 50 into Golden-Girls-style cohousing. And that number is just expected to keep growing.

Cristen: Do you feel like anything at all prepared you in any way for this phase of single life?

Pat: Like just on the surface level, no, there was nothing in my previous life. I was married. I got married when I was 20. I never lived alone. I left my parents’ home and was married. And I lived for 30 years with him. A year after our marriage broke up, I met Dave. We started living together within six months. I never lived alone, really. So when I did and had to and had to live without Dave, I just I couldn't I just I didn't know who I was. I didn't have a sense of identity, of who I was. And I had to I knew I had to find that and build upon whoever I was going to become. [00:34:23] On other levels, female friendships were always important to me. So I found that that was lost as well when my husband died in that, we had been out of the country for four years, everybody my age who would - who was my friend previously had gone on with their retirement plans, and they're all over the globe doing their thing. So when I came back to Canada, we were in Mexico when my husband died, so when I came back to Canada, I kind of threw a dart on the map of Ontario because there was no point going and trying to be with a group of friends. They were all over the place. So that was a loss. That was the double whammy loss when I realized that I really was going into my senior life alone, totally alone. And I know it sounds like it's just this horrible story, but unfortunately that's the reality of an event like that in your 60s, leaves you looking at a whole lot of areas of your life that aren't filled that you need to fill. But I did need a roof over my head. I did need social friends. So my friends but my homemates are my my buddies now. They're my sisters.

Caroline: Well Pat what are the biggest benefits of sharing a space?

Pat: Oh, it's funny because just after we started living together, I went out. I had to go run an errand, and I was just a bit long, longer than I had said I'd be. I wasn't thinking anything of it and I get a phone call from one of my homemates saying, “Are you OK? Is everything all right?” And I thought, oh, my God, that is so awesome. That is so awesome. Someone to call me to see if I'm OK. Someone to be there as soon as I walk in the door. I mean, that is just I was overwhelmed by a very simple thing that she did. So it was quite phenomenal to me.

Cristen: This experience Pat's describing echoes the Big Friendship themes we talked about last episode, in part one, with Aminatou Sow. Society might dismiss our platonic partnerships as less valid than marriage or kids, when in fact, y’all, they're often the only "social safety nets" we've got.

Pat: You know, my sister was ill a while ago, so I came out to dinner that night, told by my homies — I call them my homies — told my homies about, you know, that whether I should go see her. And they chime in with what they think. It's just having that conversation, saying it out loud. Listening to them say pros and cons, things I haven't thought of. It's just that process. And I remember walking back and going to bed that night and thinking, oh, that was so much easier than with just stuff ruminating in my head and going round and round around with nobody to just say it out loud to. Makes a big difference.

Caroline: So what advice would you give to your younger self about long-term life planning?

Pat: Oh, heeheehee. Oh, gosh. OK, let's see. Where could I start? Don't sweat the small stuff. Get a hold of your own finances. Whether you're married or whatever. Get ahold of your finances. Live frugally. You can still live well. Don't waste money. Love your sisters. Find sisters everywhere you go. Create adventures. If there's none right in front of you. And worry less about having stuff and more about having people around you. Gosh, I could go on and on.

Caroline: I wish you would, Pat!!! OK unladies …what are your thoughts on Golden Girls dreams and singlehood wishes? Let us know! You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and jump into the thread for this episode.

Cristen: To follow Ashley Simpo and her writing, follow her on Twitter @ashleysimpo. You can also visit unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources, transcripts, and our weekly Unladylike newsletter. There, we’ll be posting a photo of Pat and her homies (and her dog!). You can find Pat and her organization Senior Ladies Living Together on Facebook. Just search: Senior Ladies Living Together.

Caroline: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Cristen: This podcast was created by your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: And Caroline Ervin of Unladylike Media.

Cristen: Next week…

Angela Chen: You know, there's so many books that are like how to want sex, wanting sex again, you know, that kind of thing. But there's very few books about, you know, maybe the other person, the higher desire partner should try to tamp down their desire. But why is that true? You know, there's two people in the relationship. Why does one person have more moral standing?

Caroline: It’s the third and final installment of our singlehood series! We’re talking to author Angela Chen about what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and how our ideas about sex shape our expectations about romance and relationships.

Cristen: You won’t want to miss this episode! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.