Seniors

Issues and events regarding the particular barriers to affordable housing faced by seniors

Can Senior’s Underused Bed-Space Help Solve Housing Crises?

The New Zealand locations may be unfamiliar, but the housing crisis there is locally familiar within many wealthier nations around the world. From The New Zealand Herald: "Census data reveals...

Building Street Safety Into California’s Affordable Housing Program

"Seniors tend to walk more for recreation than do other demographics, but also do so more slowly given increased reliance on mobility assistive devices like canes, walkers, and wheelchairs." This...

Unhoused Elder Support Wins National Aging Innovation Award

Just who in Multnomah CountyMultnomah County includes Portland and five other cities in the state of Oregon won an award for its innovations to serve older people who...

Aging Out Of Care Into Homelessness At Age 68! A Misprint? Alas, No

OMG, you're so old you don't even know what OMG means! That's a comment that might well be made at an editorial meeting of affordablehousingaction.org — not exactly important...

Older Adults Leaving Big Cities To Escape High House Prices

Here are two reports that have significance for seniors living in England. The first report, prepared by Independent Age, analysed data about where seniors are living. The data is from...

Food: Everybody Needs It For Survival. How About For Community Interaction Among Seniors?

There are no definitive answers yet from a new Bournemouth University project in association with the UK's United St Saviour’s Charity. The LEMONADE Project intends to ". . . provide multigenerational...

Cohousing – A Model For Housing That Suits Older People?

The Silver TsunamiSilver Tsunami refers to the post world war II population bulge (the baby boom) which will continue to swell the population of seniors for the next decade....

The Postwar Baby Boom Is Becoming The Silver Tsunami. Is It Euthanasia Time?

It may seem a little harsh even for a socialist publication — the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) — to point the finger at mainstream health authority plans to...

Embarking On The Senior’s Housing Voyage In Canada

This writer acquired the label "senior" label recently. COVID arrived around the same time, so it's a bit hard to tell, but moving from adult to senior didn't seem...

Neglected Social Housing Or Any Other Can Hound Older People Towards Long Term Care

Research has long shown that older people are more vulnerable to changes in their environment. For example, even though it may be more expensive and less efficient to allow...

Old, Tired, Sick? “There is no medicine as powerful as housing.”

The headline comment above comes from Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the University of California's San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. There's more: "By the time homeless people are...

Homelessness Triggered: Then The Same ‘Old’ Before-And-After Story

This post is about older lives, lived on a fixed income. That's a dangerous state of affairs, given that much of free market North American society accepts that just...

Age Strips Away Our Shock Absorbers. Homelessness Kills Older People

The stability of your surroundings is a clear health benefit as you age. Nursing Home administrators have long known that your state of health can depend upon your particular...

Who Cares? Barcelona Knows, And Is Setting Out To Care For Carers

A study by the Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies of Barcelona has identified some 355,000 citizens who spend at least a portion of their time caring for the...

Partner, Gone. House, Gone. Growing Old On A Car Ride To Nowhere

Young and homeless because of substance use mental health aging out of care mistreatment at home pure adventurism financial mismanagement relationship breakdown . . . . The list of possible...

Back In The Closet Again? Lonely, Aging, Support Services For LGBT+

Aging? Attracted to those sunshine-filled photos of casually (and expensively) dressed, gorgeous older folks, cheering themselves with raised arms because their pickle-ball team has just won (again). Who isn't attracted....

Public Housing May Be Healthier For Your Brain Than Free-Market Palaces

Hey, North American! How would you like to take a tour of a public housing building, get to view the playgrounds, the corridors, and even take a peek inside...

Social Tenants, Move Out For A While. It’s Good For The Planet

"Social housing tenants need reassurance on decarbonising homes." That's a headline that is revisited below in this post. These days, it's also the punch line, as in ". . ....

Toronto Seniors Public Housing: Why Big Wasn’t Necessarily Beautiful

Founded in 2002, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) owned 60,000 homes in the City of Toronto. It was the second largest public housing authority in North America. That's...

Building An Alternative Future For Women With Low Income

The Resilient Cities Network assists cities that are looking for assurances that they will continue to prosper in the future. The Network's assessment tools requires cities to evaluate shocks...

Refurbishing Refuseniks: Public Housing Tenant Self-Defence

Those dratted American public housing tenants who won't drink the Kool-Aid! With the Race-To-Replace currently under starter's orders, big bucks and bulldozers poised and ready, who are these selfish...

Dealing With The Opposite Of Homelessness: Dementia Lockup

In North America, when someone is diagnosed with dementia, people often think in terms of care facilities with locked doors. In the Netherlands, it's another story. Some of the elderly...

New Housing Model For Seniors Set To Break Ground In The U.S.

From Colorado and Pennsylvania comes news of housing projects for seniors that will add to the existing housing choices for people as they age. Both are founded on evidence that...

Financial Strain For U.S. Seniors Who Rent, As Well As A Possible Fix

Bailey Hu reports that older households in the US have experienced rising financial stress between October 2020 and September 2021. Being behind on housing payments is one way the...

Report Recommends Reforms To Improve Public Housing For Older Tenants

Although Australia has policies and programs to support aging, the experience of aging tenants in public housing has received little attention. A recent report from the Australian Housing and...

UK Role Reversal: Granny’s Living In The House. Kids Living In The Granny Suite.

COVID-19 has had some unexpected impacts on family relationships in the United Kingdom. And studies may soon show similarly unexpected consequences in other countries. The entire model of home ownership...

Aging UK: The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost – And The Coop Is Broken

More than 4.3 million homes in England do not meet basic standards of decency. It is more prevalent in the private sector, and among residents with lower incomes. Although it's...

From England: Getting To The Roots Of The Mismatch Between Seniors’ Housing Needs And Supply

The baby boom. This is not something that millenials or gen x folks want to hear about, because lord-knows they have enough issues of their own to tackle. And...

Prepare For the Silver Tsunami, Coming Soon, Now Arrived

In those sleepy days before the dire threat of a COVID pandemic sharpened everybody's attention, the "silver tusnami" was a coming distraction more than a call to action. Did...

Retired On Minimum Income? Barcelona Tries To Make It A Good Life

From a North American perspective, which affordablehousingaction.org shares in Canada with our noisy neighbour to the south, discussions about the future of public housing trend towards the awful. Inevitably,...

Ontario’s Disastrous COVID Care Home Response: For-Profit Did It Worse

In the great contest over who does housing better, "for-profit" developers and managers compete against government managed construction and maintenance. The referee is . . . one of the above?!?!...

A Vancouver Housing Example: How Government “Hands Off” Doesn’t Work

There is persistent advocacy in many countries that is fuelled by housing development interests. It can be summed up by the idea of "just build more." In The U.S. there...

Webinars And Remote Meetings – Getting on with Housing Business When You Can’t Get Together

There is no question that the internet has made it easier for people to stay connected during the COVID pandemic compared, for example, to how it was during the...

Unattainable Housing “Affordability” Definitions No Hope For Aging AU Women

What's in an affordable housing definition? Developers happily slice and dice the housing market into "affordability" segments. If they're clever enough, they may even attract government subsidies. Both government...

Options To Avoid Watching A Loved One Fade Away Behind Glass

Aging Americans without a great deal of money might be curious to know whether Canada's medicare-for-all system helps out those whose futures include nursing home care. Canada's nursing home system is...

Elderly Need Care? Home Support is Better. Are Private Nursing Homes A Rip-Off?

The harsh realities of COVID-19 have besmirched a number of nations that have followed "small-government" policies to either starve essential social programs to death, or to pass them off...

Enhanced Mental Health For Seniors In Public Housing

Patrick Raue is using his research to help seniors to stay connected. It is proving helpful to tenants living in public housing. At any time, it's important to keep connections...

Right Housing Concept, Wrong Clientele?

Here's a senior's housing project in Portugal with a different approach to its personal alarm system. Retirement residences and nursing homes commonly have buttons for residents to push or...

The Many Colours of NIMBY, Hearsay Edition: Sacrificial Seniors Lure Jackals

Well, we've sunk so low as to offer up a hearsay NIMBY. We'd rather not, of course, but in this case ...

Baby Boomers – How Do They Fare In the Housing Market?

A recent edition of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's (CMHC) Housing Market Insight looks at housing trends among baby boomers in the Greater Toronto area. Baby boomers are...

Helping Baby Boomers Go Very Slowly, Gracefully, And Affordably Bust

What do Baby Boomers Need? Fresh air and sunlight (which we all need). But surprisingly, seniors, along with the rest of us, need surprisingly little as it turns out. A...

New Jersey Non-Profit Demonstrates What Community Can Do That Government Can’t

When it comes to affordable housing, New Jersey's bickering between municipalities and the state have set a national benchmark for the lowest possible standard of government commitment to a...

Old News Is Bad News: Toronto Seniors Facing Consequences Of Unaffordable Housing

Toronto City staff are updating the city's housing strategies, on their way to a new affordable housing plan for the coming years. We can only hope that this major North...

Aging National Populations Now Face Unique Affordable Housing Challenges

Some 70 years ago, a number of nations put their other national priorities on hold while sending a large segment of their young male population off to fight World...

Canada’s NICE May Need A Naughtier Affordable Housing Project

In the spirit of its 'NICE' acronym, Canada's National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly is embarking on an admirable and extremely ambitious affordable housing initiative. The charitable...

Wuh-up Dawg? Are You a Cool Cat? Intergenerational Homeshare: Dawgs & Cats Living Together

At a recent national mayor's conference in Boston, that city shared some of its current experiments in the creation of more affordable housing. Read more in The Bay State...

Affordable Seniors Homes And The Problem of Family Support

Mobility is a game for youngsters: "Go West, Young Man": famous advice from another era to someone who would seek their fortune. But today it might be, East, West, North...

The Affordability Crisis Overwhelms The Golden Years

With the 'Silver Tsunami' of retired baby boomers now looming on the horizon, rising home prices and rents are erasing the promise of carefree retirement. For the lucky few...

The Silver Tsunami: Will Expiring Seniors Bring Down Housing Costs When Nothing Else Can?

A recent study that examined 16 years of the housing market in Australia has concluded that housing is not a commodity that reacts normally to classic market force supply...
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