Promising Solutions for Senior Housing Needs

By Sarah Rosen Wartell

States and localities need to improve housing affordability, availability, and accessibility.
 

The nation’s housing crisis is not only making it difficult for young people to afford rent or home ownership. It’s also affecting millions of seniors, who deserve to age with dignity and security. The mounting housing affordability, availability, and accessibility challenges our seniors face need greater attention from state and local leaders.
 

Roughly 12.4 million older households are housing cost burdened. For a growing number, this burden can lead to homelessness, with renters most at risk. Meanwhile, many older homeowners cannot find accessible housing or afford the repairs that would allow them to safely age in place. As a result, they remain in homes that are larger than they need, not accessible, or increasingly hard to maintain, allowing what may be their largest asset to lose value while limiting housing options for younger families.
 

The recently enacted federal 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act did not directly tackle these problems. And if left unaddressed, these challenges will only get worse. The US population is aging rapidly, with the share of Americans ages 65 and older expected to reach 23 percent in 2050. To determine effective solutions, state and local leaders first need a clear picture of the specific housing challenges and needs of seniors. A comprehensive housing needs assessment can help leaders ensure that solutions are grounded in local context.
 

Every community is different, and no single solution will address every housing challenge. Here is a range of solutions that state and local leaders can adapt to meet the specific affordability, availability, and accessibility needs of seniors in their communities.

 

Affordability
 

A national AARP survey found that most adults (75 percent) would like to age in their home and remain in their community (73 percent), but that nearly half expected to relocate given rising rent, home maintenance, or property tax costs.
 

Ensuring that older adults can live independently in their current home or community is critical to their well-being, as social connectedness is a key determinant of physical health and longevity among seniors.
 

To reduce the costs of aging in place, 17 states have deployed property tax circuit breakers, which ensure that seniors’ property taxes don’t go beyond a certain share of their income. In West Virginia, low-income adults 65 and older can request a refund when property taxes exceed 4 percent of their income. Other states, such as New Jersey, provide a set amount of tax relief to older homeowners and renters with low and middle incomes.

 

Instituting limits on utility disconnections and creating rent and utility bill assistance programs can help prevent a senior’s temporary hardship from escalating to housing loss or homelessness. But these emergency supports are not a permanent solution. Ultimately, local leaders will need to boost the housing supply, especially rental units, to reduce seniors’ risk of homelessness and expand their access to affordable housing in the community they know best.

 

Availability

 

The Urban Institute projects that the number of households headed by senior renters will hit 12.9 million by 2040, up from 7.4 million in 2020. But affordable senior apartments are in extremely limited supply.

 

To encourage their development, New York City’s Senior Affordable Rental Apartments program offers developers gap financing to build or renovate affordable housing for low-income seniors. Other localities are leveraging publicly owned land and buildings. Cornelius, Oregon, for example, partnered with a nonprofit developer to build a new public library with low-income apartments for seniors above it.

 

Making it easier to develop accessory dwelling units (ADUs), including in-law apartments and “granny flats,” can also help lower seniors’ housing and maintenance costs, allowing them to live independently on the same single-family lot as family members and caregivers.

 

ADUs are a proven solution for increasing housing supply, but financing them is challenging, often requiring liquid savings seniors don’t have. Although fixing the federal mortgage system to make ADU financing easier is the ultimate answer, localities are finding their own solutions in the meantime. For example, Boston offers financial assistance to residents building ADUs and has partnered with local lenders to improve access to home equity extraction and other ADU financing tools. Other states and cities, such as Boise, Idaho, have sought to lower the cost of construction by offering residents free, preapproved ADU blueprints.

 

Accessibility

 

Whether ADUs or rental units, building new housing is an opportunity to increase the supply of homes with accessibility features that help seniors age in place, such as step-free entryways and first-floor full bathrooms. Currently, only 10 percent of housing units in the US are ready to accommodate older people.

 

In the near term, leaders can help seniors navigate the severe shortage of affordable and accessible housing by creating targeted home repair programs. Ramps, grab bars, roll-in showers, widened doorways, and stairlifts have been shown to reduce falls and help older adults stay independent for longer. But home modifications have become increasingly out of reach for older homeowners and renters, who are more likely than homeowners to lack the resources and face the added barrier of needing a landlord’s permission to modify their space.

 

Fairfax County, Virginia’s home repair program provides eligible older, lower-income homeowners up to $1,000 in materials as well as a week’s worth of labor for home repairs and accessibility modifications. Rhode Island reimburses homeowners and renters up to $4,500 for installing retrofits like accessible bathrooms, stairlifts, and lower kitchen appliances.

 

Without solutions that address seniors’ housing availability, affordability, and accessibility needs, the nation's housing crisis will only intensify. Some states and localities are pioneering promising solutions that are important first steps toward meeting the housing needs of America’s growing older population.

 

Sarah Rosen Wartell is the president of the Urban Institute.