As the senior population continues to expand, so does the way Calgarians define their households ahead of Family Day.

When resident Aisha N. Sheikh, 51, finalized her divorce in 2023, she looked forward to a new chapter. Having raised three children, all while living with and caring for her in-laws, finding her independence as a single mom felt refreshing.

But life does not always pan out as planned. 

“Up until that point, I did not know that my mother was going to come to live with me,” she said.

Sheikh’s situation is an example of a trend taking shape in small but mighty numbers across the country. 

Even though households consisting of young adults and their parents were more common in the 2021 Census of Canada, the number of multigenerational households — living arrangements composed of grandparents, parents, and children — has been on the rise since 2016.

Housing costs have been cited as the reason most multigenerational households are found in British Columbia and Ontario, as explained in a September 2025 report by Statistics Canada. 

But in Alberta’s relatively affordable housing market, the CEO of Unison for Generations 50+, Larry Mathieson, said the cost of living is a burden to some senior Calgarians, while locals said it just scratches the surface of reasons for shared living arrangements. 

Life expenses, loneliness play a part

It’s no secret that, since the early 2000s, soaring housing costs have influenced Gen Z’s decision to stay living at home after reaching legal age. However, the population of young adults is relatively stagnant compared to that of their grandparents.

In Calgary, the number of people aged 65 and older has doubled over the past two decades, with the most recent data putting them at 14 per cent of the city’s population. 

Mathieson said that it’s seniors, not young adults, who make up the bulk of real estate seekers, and that the decision to move in with family is often the result. 

“Locally, that seems to be driven by housing prices and the challenges around acquiring housing,” he said.

In addition to shelter, Mathieson said that the price of essential items like groceries and medication contributes to the strain experienced by seniors, and that when they downsize to a family member’s home, this spreads the stress.

“It’s almost that sandwich generation, where an adult may not only be responsible for taking care of their own children, who are growing, but also for their parents,” he said. 

“We see a lot more caregiver fatigue.”

Mathieson said that caregiving is often the solution to the debate many families face when deciding the next step for their older relatives: whether to continue living in their own home or in a care facility, as either option can be costly and isolating. 

For Chiko Botomani, 49, the decision to move her mother from Zimbabwe to live between her home in Calgary and her sister’s home in Texas was made for exactly those reasons.

“The main thing was the financial part, it’s cheaper to have her here than to support her back home,” she said. 

“And also the loneliness — she was all by herself.”

Since moving her mother into her family’s home, Botomani said that her health has dramatically improved, and that it’s especially nice to have her around to spend time with her grandchildren, who are in their 20s. 

“She was really struggling. She was fatigued, she was tired, even her eyesight was a problem,” she said.

“But right now, she’s stronger.”

Sheikh, who hosted Botomani for a segment of her six-episode series, The Gen Xperience with Aisha, shared a similar sentiment in also being a mother to three young adults. 

“Having elderly people in the house is wonderful for your kids to understand the value of taking care of someone other than themselves,” she said. 

Benefits aside, Sheikh said that moving her mother into her home felt less like a decision and more like an expectation.

Culturally inclusive care facilities needed, residents say

At first, Sheikh’s mother was living with her brother, who had also recently divorced. The shift in lifestyle left him with little time to be a caretaker, and, in a Pakistani family, Sheikh said that her mother moving in with her was the natural next step. 

“We are taught that we must provide for and pay it forward to our parents, who have sacrificed so much for us, to the point where we do not do retirement homes,” she said.

Sheikh said that it’s the norm in South Asian culture for grandparents to live with their children’s families. She said that the tradition is widely encouraged, but that this doesn’t always make for a seamless transition. 

“They want to blast this whole thing, make it sound like a Bollywood movie, if you will,” said Sheikh. 

“There are integral challenges to this situation.”

Naming differences in parenting styles and the frustration that comes with sharing spaces, Sheikh said that these obstacles are ones that senior care facilities can alleviate, but that the lack of non-Western centres rules this out as an option. 

Despite roughly 47 per cent of Calgary’s population belonging to a non-European ethnicity, very few facilities catering to specific cultural groups exist, aside from the Wing Kei Care Centre and the Aboriginal Friendship Centre of Calgary.

Sheikh said that the development of such care facilities would be an asset to current caregivers amid the city’s aging population.

“Some would call it a responsibility that we must take care of our elderly, and I do understand that, but we have to figure out how we’re going to do this, otherwise it’s going to cause resentment in the next generation,” she said. 

“Within our cultures, we need to have conversations, open-minded conversations with respect and kindness and vulnerability so that we can navigate a path forward where our elderly are taken care of.”