Solidarity

Homeshare scheme brings comfort to young and old

Beth Cooke, 26, lives with Barbara Clapham, 97, as part of Homeshare, an innovative project that could help tackle the housing crisis

     For the majority of the 53 years Barbara Clapham has lived in her Victorian ground floor flat in an idyllic tree-lined street in central London she has been alone – but now the 97-year-old pensioner has a friend.

     Beth Cooke, 26, has been staying in Clapham's spare room for just two weeks, but already she cooks, washes-up and does the shopping. It is like having the perfect granddaughter to stay, except Cooke's not related and, until a month ago, she'd never met or even heard of Clapham. The odd pairing, bringing together two people seven decades apart in age, came through a scheme called Homeshare.

     The project, organised by a charity called Crossroads, provides affordable housing for young people in central London and companionship and support for elderly people who live on their own.

     Cooke, an actor currently working as a teaching assistant, pays just £50 a week rent for a room two minutes walk from Gloucester Road tube station, which would normally cost as much as £400 a week.

     In return for her bargain-basement rent, Cooke agrees to give up 10 hours each week to help her elderly flatmate.

     "If you want to be in a location like this then it's going to be very, very expensive," says Cooke, who also agrees to spend at least five nights at the flat.

     "I could afford to live in a flatshare in central London, just about. But I wouldn't be able to do it with as much money as I need to do things that I want to do. People are really interested when I tell them about my situation because it is interesting having someone so young living with someone so old. I think you do learn a lot actually, about life, I suppose. I think it's more a feeling of perspective – a completely different perspective, without any kind of family ties."

     Clapham, who owns the property, also pays £32.50 a week to the charity, covering the cost of providing regular support and check-ups on pairings, of which there are about 30.

     "It is difficult going to the shops now; it didn't used to be," explains Clapham, a retired receptionist who worked for the Ministry of Information in Cambridge during the second world war. "For me, it means I can stay here with my own things and not go into a care home. I drove a car until I was 94 but I wasn't happy driving any more, I kept thinking I was going to hit something. It had to go."

     Clapham, who has a niece and nephew living in London, can no longer walk far because of the arthritis in her spine.

"There's a big Sainsbury's across there and it's got a cash machine and I was struggling across the other day and I slipped – so I decided I mustn't do that again," she says. "It's too far now and it's getting more and more difficult for me."

     Clapham has had two previous homesharers, a young Irish girl who "went back to Ireland for the weekend and never came back", and a middle-aged Australian lady who stayed for a year and a half.

Two's company

     Sitting in her cosy living room, with an oil painting of her three-year-old self on the wall, Clapham says she heard about the scheme through a friend who was on it but had to give up because "she's very frail and needs full-time care".

     "I've only got one friend left from my own generation, I'm too old. All my contemporaries have gone, which is boring. So it's nice to have someone around the place, I must say."

     Jenny Bush, who manages Homeshare, describes it as "a bit of a crazy dating service". The charity, which is open to applications all year round, interviews and selects potential homeowners and homesharers before they are introduced to each other and, providing all goes well, are finally "matched".

     The charity is trying to match eight homeowners and homesharers, the youngest of which is 19. In most cases the homeowner provides furniture and an internet connection.

     "In the early stages you do work out what kind of tasks you need doing and make sure the hours are being fulfilled," says Bush, who asks all homesharers to commit to stay for at least six months.

     "The relationship adapts over time. Obviously, you start off and it's very new, like any relationship. Then you get to know each other and find out more and more as time goes on. It's an ongoing issue about high rents in London and also people being isolated in their homes, not being able to get out to do things like the shopping.

     "I think it's really reassuring for family and friends to know if there is someone a little bit older, there is someone there in the evening and overnight."

      Rebecca Manning, 32, a student nurse studying at Middlesex University, has been homesharing with a lady in her 70s in Pinner, north-west London, for the past two months.

     "I think what happens is you become part of the family," she says. "There are obviously boundaries, it's still a professional agreement you have, but she's a bit like my gran, really. I do everything from unloading the dishwasher to popping to the shops to pick up bits and pieces, and having a nice chat with a cup of tea."

Manning missed out on student accommodation – which is becoming increasingly expensive and hard to find – when she moved to London from Suffolk, where she used to be a radio presenter.

     "For her family it provides a bit of peace of mind that she's got someone to stay with," says Manning. "They're all very keen on somebody being there, otherwise they'd have to start thinking about sheltered accommodation. To give up a home which she's lived in for longer than I've been on the planet seems really unfair."

      The scheme was launched and overseen by Kensington and Chelsea borough council in the early 90s, but passed on to Crossroads nearly two years ago.

     Currently Homeshare only operates in certain parts of London, but Bush hopes to expand. There are also a sprinkling of similar schemes across the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US.

"The state isn't going to put people in care homes; they're trying to keep them at home," says Bush. "That's one of the factors in play and that's what we need to address with Homeshare – we really want to make sure it's accessible to a lot more people."

      For Manning, who says she could see herself homesharing for the duration of her three-year degree, the best thing about the scheme is knowing there's someone else in the house. "The first night I moved in I heard a massive noise and I didn't know what it was," she says.

      "So I went downstairs and said, 'you all right?' to the lady I live with and she said, 'I've had a carer live with me for the last two months who has never come down; I really appreciate that you just came down'."