Fifty-three and couch surfing: when divorce forces a hunt for new housing
In July 2020, Lauren White, a middle-school counselor, was sitting on her deck with her husband, discussing the impending sale of their home south of Richmond, Virginia, and the new home they had under contract.
The four-bedroom, 2,500 sq ft house had an easier commute and a fenced-in backyard that made White, 41, dream of future barbecues with their children, ages four and eight. They’d sent letters to the seller in hopes of standing out from other buyers – and it worked. They got the home they wanted and were days away from closing.
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White’s husband suddenly announced: “I don’t think I want to do it anymore.” White responded: “I’m like, ‘What? What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t think I want to buy a house with you anymore.’” She asked him if there was someone else, expecting him to say no. He admitted he’d been seeing another woman for eight months, was in love and wanted a divorce.
Blindsided, White was catapulted into two crises: the dissolution of her marriage, and the need to find housing quickly. It’s a challenge that many Americans face, when more than half of first marriages end in divorce and it often takes two incomes to make the rent. The uncoupling couple often must cobble together temporary housing arrangements, seek new lodging, and rely on friends and family for help.
White found it difficult to balance the emotional and practical effects of her separation. “The kids and I stayed in a hotel for five days. I tried to make it an adventure for them … I don’t feel like I dealt with the affair until after I got the housing situated because that was so immediate.”
A friend sent her Zillow listings, picking only options near good schools. Her father, a real-estate attorney, and sister, an agent, helped her get out of the contract on the new house; there had been other offers on it, so the owners didn’t hold her and her ex-husband to the deal. Finally, she landed a 1,300 sq ft rental with bedrooms for the kids and a landlord who let her keep her cat despite a no-pets lease.
Laurel Starks, a divorce real estate expert in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and author of the book The House Matters in Divorce, said today’s housing crunch has made divorce even more fraught.
A house is ‘a war chest of funds’. Illustration: Mathilde Vogt/The Guardian
“When you have a house in a divorce, you have two options. You either keep it or sell it. If one party wants to keep it, most of the time it involves a refinance to buy out the equity. Their existing mortgage might be 2%, and they have to do a buyout at a 7% interest rate now.” A house, she added, is not “just a thing. It represents the brick and mortar of the life of the family, and it’s very emotional. It’s also a war chest of funds” and therefore often a source of conflict.
Leslieann Hobayan, 49, a poet and adjunct instructor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, went through a collaborative divorce instead of going to court, which saved money. But collective debt meant that they opted to sell the marital home.
“At my lawyer’s advice, it was better to pay off the shared debt and start clean. Neither of us could afford it on our own. The market’s crazy, and it’s been crazy for a while. So we didn’t have any trouble selling the house, but finding a place to live was the tricky part.”
Even buying a smaller house in central New Jersey for her and her three teenage children was not an option, so she settled for an apartment. “I live in a condo now, and it’s a huge adjustment to move from single-home living to high-density living.” There’s less privacy, less room for the dog to run and sounds from the neighbor upstairs.
Faced with limited options, many continue to live under the same roof because it’s too costly to live apart.
Mike Ellis, 53, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, and his ex decided to “birdnest”. As he described it, “our son stays in the house we lived in together, and my ex and I rotate in and out of the house every three or four days. At first, we rented a house together, so that every time we were not with our son we would live in the house that we rented.”
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It wasn’t ideal. Ellis said: “Honestly, this was way too stressful … And if we wanted to go on dates or had someone else sleep over, one person would always be worried if the other person would pop in. It just got too complicated … and it didn’t start the process of living separately.”
They rented their own places, “but then we had the financial burden of paying a mortgage and two rents. A lot of money was flying out the door every month,” in pricey Los Angeles, where median rent is $2,933. His ex suggested couch surfing with friends for a few months. But Ellis “didn’t want to be 53 and living on someone’s couch … We had to tell our son we are selling the place and each going to get our own place.”
Sometimes that’s easier said than done, and the newly separated often have to totally reconfigure their professional and home lives. Isobella Jade, 40, a mother of two in Houston, had been a stay-at-home parent when she was handed divorce papers.
“Suddenly I had to get a full-time job to afford an apartment. Here in Houston, it’s not cheap” to find a two-bedroom apartment. “Half my paycheck went to our rent … And then you have to add to that when you are going through a divorce, nothing is final. Child support hadn’t been worked out.” It took 11 months to finalize her divorce.
“I needed a place for my kids to live, and we walked in with literally a trash bag. The needs for your children don’t stop even though you’re going through a divorce … You’re figuring this new landscape out, this new future.”
As part of that, Jade went through a purge and purchase. “As a cleanse, when you’re going through something kind of traumatic and challenging, you don’t want to keep the items and objects of your past.” She did a “slow rebuild” and bought a new bed and bunk beds for the kids, plus a dining-room set and a couch.
Relocation and rebuilding are expensive features of divorce but can be a needed reset.
“It’s hard to heal in the place you were hurt,” said Olivia Dreizen Howell, 38, of Long Island, New York, a divorced mother of two boys. “I did all the things. I had therapy. I had reiki healing. But I was still in those walls. I was still sleeping in the bedroom that my ex and I slept in.”
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Clearing out emotionally charged items gave Dreizen Howell and her sister the idea to launch Fresh Starts Registry. People experiencing divorce can request household appliances or even bedroom sets – just as they likely did when they were engaged to be married.
Dreizen Howell sold the marital home after three years and relocated to her parents’ house with her boys. “It was a big move psychologically.” But having a multigenerational household with “other adults around took a lot of the constant emotional burden off of me”, she said. “There’s so much about single parenthood that we don’t talk about in terms of the loneliness aspect and the isolation. Just being the only adult ‘on’ all the time means you really always sleep with one eye open.”
Jade said rebuilding a household and a life takes time, but she knows that the change is temporary. “I don’t love where we live, but it’s OK for right now. I’ve learned not to be defined by square footage and by shine and polish.”