Marty Holmes pays monthly rent, does the laundry, fixes the car and shares his somewhat delicious leftovers. In return, Sally Collins is what Holmes describes as “my iconic mentor.”  

She pushed the Vietnam-era Navy veteran to embrace an exercise program, which manages his diabetes, helps him understand how to enjoy retirement and delivers the mail to his basement apartment. 

They are so much more than landlord and tenant. 

“We are our own retirement home,” said Collins with a smile. 

They owe their match-up to a program called Sunshine Home Share, designed to pair older homeowners with home seekers who can’t afford the Denver metro area’s high rent but are willing to exchange services for a break-in cost. 

“You know that song ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas?’ Bingo!” said Holmes, who had just finished raking and bagging a backyard scattered with autumn leaves. Their backyard faces the 18th hole of a golf course perimetered by a dirt country trail. 

Lined up along his windowsills next to his Dean Martin CD collection are dozens of once lost and now found golf balls. 

Side-by-side on a tapestry-draped couch, the not-so-odd couple described how their friendship and business partnership started. 

They are the 2023 version of friends–with–benefits. 

Sunshine Home Share 

Holmes, 75 and Collins, 87, met each other six and a half years ago through a nonprofit business called Sunshine Home Share. The rent for Holmes’ tiny Wheat Ridge apartment was increasing for the umpteenth time and Collins, a widow, needed extra money to pay escalating property taxes.  

They each pondered a community ad asking for people to try a home–share through Sunshine, and separately they decided to take a risk and took a dip into the unknown world of living with a stranger to get by.  

Collins knew what she didn’t want and that was a person who did not recycle.

Holmes’ family was skeptical, but he had nothing to lose. 

He supplied the $50 it cost for a background check, gave three references, and Sunshine matched the two of them based on their needs. Next, Holmes showed up at Collins’ home with a suitcase and lived there for a two-week trial.  

He’s from Long Island and she grew up in Tulsa.

He’s an “industrial guy all the way” and she was college-educated.

He’s military and she was the wife of a geologist.

She’s very religious and he had to watch his sailor language. 

He’s the talker and she’s the listener.  

It worked.  

“It was amazing how we hit it off,” said Holmes. “We never had a hitch about anything.”  

Marty and Sally were Sunshine Home Share’s first match.  

Since that start in 2017, the program has united 90 people, some who had an extra room in exchange for payment, others who traded chores for rent and those who were a combination of both. 

Home providers must be over 55 because Sunshine’s mission is aging in place, but home seekers can be any age. 

In fact, many of the matches happen between older adults and younger people who are low wage earners and can’t afford Denver rents.

As Sunshine Home Share founder Alison Joucovsky described it, her program “creates affordable housing using existing housing stock.”  

The nonprofit is continuously evaluating potential matches and just recently paired a new widower who lives on a small ranch with a senior who was evicted from his apartment after 30 years and was facing living out of his car. The renter helps feed the goats and chickens in return for discounted rent.  

Sunshine currently has about 20 matches up and running, which is down from years before because, Joucovsky said, some homeowners are now asking for higher rents, which are not affordable to seniors with limited income.

“Homeowners need more money to pay their property taxes,” she added.  

Sunshine does not charge home share clients the $50 background check anymore and its other services include connecting around 600 adults a year to community resources. It also offers financial wellness and empowerment counseling and community classes on topics affecting older adults.  

The program exists on $300,000 a year, which comes mostly from donations and grants.  

But that annual funding just got slimmer because the city of Denver’s new administration pulled its $60,000 in funding for 2024. This is debilitating timing, Joucovsky said, because evictions and homelessness are increasing for Colorado seniors, who are struggling on a fixed income in the Denver metro area’s skyrocketing rents. Low–income senior buildings have a two to four-year waiting list, which means that options for low-income older adults are very limited to non-existent. 

More than 410,800 Americans aged 55 and older are expected to be evicted this year, according to AARP/Statista analysis of Census Bureau data. 

The key to home share relationship success?

Holmes and Collins keep their space. 

Holmes is a leader with the Indian Tree Village Homeowners Association and Collins plays with a serious church recorder group at Arvada United Methodist Church. They will not celebrate Thanksgiving together, instead visiting their grown children and their families. The two do love going to free movies together, haunt their Friday neighborhood pop-up parties and occasionally transport one other to various emergency hospital visits.  

“I just say, ‘To hell with the ambulance. Let’s go!’” said the sailor who forgot to watch his language.

They have been successful in this living experiment “because of their genuine mutual respect and ability to communicate,” said Joucovsky.  

It’s true that after this long under the same roof, they even finish each other’s sentences. 

“Open mind. Open heart!” piped Holmes. 

“Shut mouth,” said Collins.