Rachel Cohen

As part of this work, Kuhn opened her Philadelphia home to Panther Cubs, younger activists, an experience that led her to establish the National Shared Housing Resource Center in 1980.

That organization would go on to help establish hundreds of home-sharing programs across the U.S., fielding thousands of inquiries annually by the late 1980s.

Kuhn viewed home-sharing as both a form of affordable housing and a way to combat social isolation.

Kuhn's ideas about intergenerational housing have found new urgency in West Philadelphia.

The city's historically Black neighborhood of Mantua is seeing more longtime residents pushed out as Drexel University expands nearby.

Over the past decade, the area's white population has increased by 73 percent, while rents have risen by 44 percent.

More concerning, there's been a startling 454% increase in the number of households that spend more than half their incomes on rent.

In response, leaders through the Mantua Civic Association are partnering with Drexel to match students with older residents in the area.

Again, the goal is twofold, helping longtime residents maintain or achieve homeownership while providing more affordable rental options for students.

This vision gained traction in 2021 when leaders received state and philanthropic funding to help existing Mantua residents make repairs on their duplexes so homeowners could start homesharing.

Now leaders are partnering with a local developer to build a $60 million mixed-use project that will include 18 duplexes and triplexes specifically meant for intergenerational homesharing.

Older Mantua residents will buy the properties and rent out some units to help cover their mortgages.

These home-sharing programs will recruit renters from Drexel's longstanding community-based writing workshop, a free arts program for students and local Philadelphians.

Leaders plan to incorporate journaling and storytelling sessions into their home-sharing model, called Second Story Collective, and already have their sights on expanding to university-adjacent areas beyond Philadelphia.

In 2022, they received a $1 million National Science Foundation grant to explore replicating this model nationwide.

Higher education is in crisis, and students and faculty are craving a new way of being more impactful, said Rachel Wenrich, executive director for arts and civic innovation at Drexel's Community Partnerships Office.

This offers that, while bringing university resources to bear on solutions the neighborhood itself has identified.

While such institutional partnerships show promise, sustaining intergenerational housing can be difficult.

The model pioneered by Kuhn often struggled with sustainability, and hundreds of home shares ultimately shut down after just a few years.

Finding reliable renters that homeowners trusted, handling legal and administrative tasks, and collecting payments proved overwhelming.