The Challenge of Providing Adequate Housing for the Elderly . . . Along with Everyone

Our patterns of land use and development have failed to accommodate the changed housing needs of an aging population. Primary among these needs is the desire of the elderly to be able to "age in place." To meet this need, America's suburban communities in particular will need to re-think their reliance on exclusive single-family zoning and begin planning and zoning for an increasingly large number of the elderly. Despite understandable concerns about maintaining housing values, this may well prove to be politically achievable simply because the very demographic changes that create the need will create a growing constituency in favor of the changes needed to meet that need. Moreover, by making our neighborhoods more friendly to the elderly, we will simultaneously make them friendlier to all other age groups as well.