Home Alone

Surging U.S. Older Adult Population Facing Lack of Appropriate and Affordable Housing

    Cindy, an elementary school teacher in San Rafael, CA., is scared about her future. She and her partner broke up a little more than a year ago and she has no children. She can’t retire yet because she needs to work a few more years to get her pension and worries about her housing needs as she ages. She owns (with a mortgage) a triplex she shares with her ex, who’s on the title, and renters.

  “I’m truly very grateful to have a roof over my head, but my unit is tiny, 650 square feet, and up a long flight of stairs,” says Cindy, who is in her mid-fifties. “What am I going to do when I’m too old to climb the steps and need taking care of? Home prices and rents are sky-high right now and are probably going to get worse. Where will I go? I’ve put every single dollar into the house and am broke with no savings. And I’m on my own.”

    Cindy is not alone as she thinks. According to the report Profile of Older Americans 27% or over a quarter of older adults, 65 and over, lived alone in 2021. That number went to nearly 3 in 10 living alone in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.   

Those numbers will only go up as the nation’s older adult population continues to swell.  According to a study last fall year from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Housing America’s Older Adults 2023, the U.S. population of 65 and up is increasing at historic rates, up 34 percent from 43 million in 2012 to 58 million in 2022. Within ten years, the first baby boomers will turn 80, increasing the growth rate among the oldest and most vulnerable age groups. In 2021, according to the report, 97.5 people lived in their own homes or that of someone else, and 80% of them lived alone or with a spouse. The share of older adults living alone increases with age rising from 25% among those 65-79, to 41 percent among those 80 and older. And low-income households will struggle to find housing given that income inequality is growing, and baby boomers are aging into a group that has fixed or falling incomes.

As the country’s population of older adults increases, so does the demand for appropriate housing but with the biggest demographic shift in history at full tilt, researchers and housing policymakers say we don’t have enough accessible, adaptable, or affordable housing for this surging population. (Particularly housing that can meet the needs of older people living alone on fixed incomes who often have mobility, vision, and hearing issues and routinely need help with the activities of daily living such as shopping, doctors’ visits, housework, and personal hygiene.)  

    “The programs on housing alternatives are promising but we don’t have the scale to meet the demand of the people who need it,” says Dr. Jennifer Molinsky, director of the Housing an Aging Society Program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, and lead author of the study. As part of her report, Molinsky also surveyed older adults living alone across 97 metro areas and found that only 13 percent of those people could afford facilities such as assisted living, and only 14 percent could afford to have a daily visit from a paid caregiver.

      Although many people prefer to age in their own homes, those same homes might not be suitable to their needs as a senior single. They are often too big to maintain, have too many steps, and have no bathroom on the main floor for those who can’t go up and down all day. And if you're aging solo, with no one to help with the hundreds of daily tasks we all must perform, it presents unique challenges.

      That’s why aging experts advise us all to take a good hard look into our future and start preparing before it becomes a problem. Not an easy thing to do.

         “All of us need to think about what we might prefer and need as we age,” Molinsky adds. “But it’s hard…while in our 60s and 70s to look into the future.”  

      Cindy’s plan is to try to find somewhere her five girlfriends, all childless like her, and she can live as a family where members take care of each other.

    “It’s really scary being a single woman with no children,” Cindy says. “Nursing home prices are ridiculous and sure, I’ll have a small pension but with prices and taxes going up all the time, that won’t cover me.”  

     We all know that housing is the hottest of hot-button issues in the nation, where finding somewhere affordable to live is getting harder and harder. But for single seniors without family to help them, financially or otherwise, it is frightening.   

   And what type of housing you have makes an enormous difference to your health and well-being and often can be the difference between eating and heating.

    “It’s vital, on so many levels,” says Molinsky. “It’s about physical safety and the ability to be independent, but the financing part of the cost of housing is difficult. To not afford your house when you are older is difficult and people who cannot afford houses spend less on food and medications. We need to extend the housing opportunities people have in the places they live when they can’t downsize in their community because of prices.” 

      Why is housing so expensive?

      “Quite simply, we have a shortage of 4 to 7 million homes,” says Alex Horowitz, director of housing policy initiatives at Pew.  “Our housing stock is built on zoning for larger houses, even though we have 63 percent of households that have only one or two people in them. Only 9 percent of households have more than five or more people in them. So, we need a lot of housing now, but the biggest shortage is for smaller homes - townhouses, apartments, condos.”

    Renters are in trouble too, he says. “Half of renters are cost-burdened, paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent, and a quarter of renters are spending 50 percent of their income on rent.”

    Christine, who’s over 75, has lived in her hillside apartment in Larkspur in Marin County for 30 years. “It was better before when it was owned by a family,’ she says. “We didn’t have these huge rent increases.”

  Since the complex was bought in early 2022 by private equity firm Prime Residential, residents have seen rent rise by 17%, says long-term tenant Joanne O’Hehir. Christine is paying nearly $2800 and can’t afford to have her cat’s teeth cleaned. She’s putting the fee on her credit card. 

“I’m really stretched,” she says. “I don't know what to do. It will soon be unaffordable, period. I don’t want to move to another state. I have brothers and friends here. I never thought I would have to live in low-income housing.”

        Even low-income housing is no longer affordable for some seniors on a fixed income.

       John Geoghegan, an author of historical non-fiction is 66, and lives in the Villas at Hamilton, a Low-Income Housing Tax Credit property (LIHTC) on a former Air Force base in Novato, Ca. in Marin County). He has seen his rent go from $1,211 in 2016 to $1601 starting this November.  This is a $390, 32% percent monthly increase compared to when he first moved in. He now pays half of his income - $19,500 - against a gross annual income of approximately $40,000.  

     “I recognize that the building is still below market rate for which I am grateful,” Geoghegan says. “Nevertheless, it is hard for seniors living on a fixed income to absorb these kinds of rent increases. Fortunately, I can work to supplement my income, but some residents don't have that ability because they are too physically or cognitively impaired. As a result, they are being forced to move out of LIHTC properties like this one.”

     Driving this scarcity of housing is restrictive zoning, says Horowitz. “We need more homes because the household population has declined and there are a lot more people aging, and households with seniors are smaller. There’s a greater need for people to be able to live in places where they don’t have to drive everywhere and are close to jobs and stores. But if a jurisdiction requires a person to buy a quarter or half an acre of land to get a home, whether they want to or not, or cannot afford it, that makes it hard to live near the places you go to.”

     In markets where housing is more plentiful, cities have updated their zoning regulations to build more homes. Minneapolis reduced its minimum lot size from 5000 square feet to 1400 square feet.  “Lots of landlords there are not now in a position to raise rents because new housing is coming online,” Horowitz says. 

     Houston also reduced its lot size minimum and then built 80,000 starter townhomes. In 2019, Oregon effectively banned single-family zoning statewide and allowed legalizing duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes.

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When considering where and how you’re going to live as you age, there are several options to consider:

Staying in Your Own Home

For folks who want to stay put in their homes, consider if that home can be adapted to your needs as you age.  Does it have stairs and uneven floors? Could you, with a few modifications, turn your downstairs into your complete living space? Is there a bathroom downstairs? Can you install one?

     “There are two issues here, affording the modifications and finding a trustworthy contractor that can help,” says Harvard’s Molinsky. She points to The Fall Prevention Center of Excellence (FPCE) at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California, which last year launched a Home Modification Toolkit as a good place to start. The tool is a collection of resources developed by the FPCE with links to the many different types of agencies and organizations involved with home modification and supportive housing at state, local, and national levels.

An alternative approach to staying in your own home is the “Villages” model, says Dr Carla Perissinotto, a geriatrician and professor at the University of California, San Francisco. 

 Villages are membership organizations across the country that promote aging in place using staff and volunteers to help older adults with transportation, home repairs, shopping, and other household tasks, and to build community connections to combat isolation. San Francisco Village charges $10, $25, or $50 monthly for a membership and you can choose which fee you will pay.

“It’s the idea of helping people age in place by creating community,” says Perissinotto.  

     Sarah Brigid Newsham Kent, the program and creative director of San Francisco Village, says more people are choosing to pay the lower fees because, “of the wild cost of living. We are seeing the ‘forgotten middle,’” adds Kent, “those who have income above the median income of older persons in 2020, $26,668, but who are not wealthy enough to buy all the services they need.”

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)

The small or “tiny” houses are built on the same property as larger homes are rented inexpensively. Many American cities are changing the zoning laws to accommodate ADUs to ease the housing burden for seniors or provide living space for full-time caregivers. Hawaii and Colorado just became the tenth and eleventh states to pass new laws allowing more homes on smaller lots so single-family homeowners can now build accessory dwelling units ADUs on their property. Multiple homes now can be built on lots as small as 2, 000 square feet.

House Sharing

If you have a single-family house with an extra bedroom, you could get help with the mortgage/rent, care, and some companionship by renting out a room to someone. Some organizations find you a roommate to share with.

HomeShare Online (formerly Silvernest) helps seniors find compatible roommates for those seeking a share situation or looking to rent part of their house.

Service-Enriched Housing

Harvard’s Molinsky suggests looking at Massachusetts-based 2Life, which has generally built for lower-income households but is now building some middle-income housing too, including Opus in Newton, MA.    

     “It’s quality housing but there is some a level of services,” Molinsky says. “Maybe a meal a day, maybe someone there making sure you’re getting your benefits. Not assisted living but a step toward a more supported system. And there is someone on site 24 hours.”

Senior Living Communities

An assisted living/memory care facility allows you to live among peers and access care and support when needed. But they are expensive. According to the National Council on Aging, the average cost of assisted living in the United States is $4,500 per month, or $54,000 annually depending on where you live and the level of care you need. In California, the average monthly cost ranges from $2,925 to $9,410. Moreover, the base fee for room and board does not include other services. Assisted living in the statewide area of New York in 2023 ranges from $1,113.41 to $11,231.71 per month with the average cost at $4,185.00

Resources

1. The National Council on Aging has a comprehensive guide of resources for older adults living alone from health care support to financial assistance.

2. Eldercare Locator offers valuable information and connections to local resources. You just insert your zip code in the search bar.

3. FindHelp.org  is a tool with great potential to connect people to a social care network by allowing zip code searches, says Dr. Perissinotto.

Benefits Programs

Several programs may benefit older Americans. The National Council On Aging (NCOA.org) has a benefits checkup that helps you find if you are qualified to access crucial money-saving programs that help bridge the gap between income and daily living expenses. You type in a minimal amount of information to learn if you can qualify for help with food, utilities, and prescription charges.