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Older Coloradans are turning to the “Golden Girls” housing model to fight costs, loneliness

An older man in a red shirt walks outside with a younger man in a residential area.
Claudia A. Garcia
/
The Colorado Sun
Glenn Little and roommate Victor depart for their weekly Costco trip. Victor is the youngest housemate at 28. Most of the housemates are in their 50's and 60's.

The six-bedroom home on a shady southwest Denver street was built in the 1960s, a ranch-style with a series of connecting rooms, a kitchen skylight, and a serving window to pass food to the living room. The art covering nearly every wall falls mostly into two categories: the Old West or dogs.

Piles of books are stacked by the recliners in the living and family rooms, on the dining room table and various places on the floor. In the backyard, there’s a barbecue grill and an informal garden of peppers and pumpkins.

Glenn Little, who turns 70 soon, loves his home that’s a short walk to the path along Bear Creek. He loves that his neighbors feed his loveable lab, Huck, sliced turkey over the fence when the dog trots out to say his hellos. Little, who is divorced and retired from his career at Mission Foods, doesn’t want to sell the place. He also doesn’t want to live there alone.

“It’s a big ole house for just one person,” he said, sitting in a hefty living room chair, not far from a hutch that holds his cookie jar collection.

Which is why Little started collecting roommates. He has turned his home into something resembling life on the 1980s-’90s sitcom “The Golden Girls,” only more like an older-man fraternity house.

To read the entire story, visit The Colorado Sun.