Home, Housing & Boomers

My colleague and dear friend Mark Bauer (current chair of the Aging & Law AALS section) sent me a link to an article published in CityLab.  The article is titled Where Are the Baby Boomers Going to Live Out Their Golden Years? The article mentions a recent report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies,  Housing America’s Older Adults. The Harvard website for this project includes a number of resources, including the report, an interactive map, an infographic, videos of the keynote address and panel discussion. If you don’t have time to read the entire report, be sure to read the executive summary, available here.

The CityLab article mentions some other helpful sources, including an AARP survey on preferences regarding aging at home. The article references aging and disability, looking at the suitability of Boomers; homes for them in the future

The housing stock built for Baby Boomers largely wasn’t designed with accessibility in mind. There are five universal-design housing features that tend to address a variety of disabilities that residents face as they age: no-step entries; single-floor living; switches and outlets set at lower heights; extra-wide hallways and doors; and lever-style doors and faucets. Nearly 90 percent of existing homes have one of these features, according to the report—but just 57 percent have two.

The article notes that more recently built homes are more likely to include at least some of these universal design features, but concludes

Yet these detached, single-floor, single-family homes—and the automobile-centric society that comes with them—are only going to fall further out of step with the needs of residents over time. And sooner rather than later. Homes can be retrofitted with lever-style handles and no-step entries (albeit at great expense). It’s much harder to turn exurban and rural communities where older Americans live into places that nurture seniors rather than isolate them.