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A quick note from the road about stats on aging in place and better ways to think about it
I’m at a conference this week and will be back next week to try to synthesize some of the ideas and connections it’s been sparking. But I wanted to drop a quick note now, because I’ve been thinking about a stat from a recent report.
A new survey from Alignment Health and Ipsos found that 90% of seniors are facing at least one social barrier to healthy aging. The most cited barrier, ahead of even healthcare costs and economic instability, was aging in place, named by 68% of respondents. That's up from 62% last year, and as the report puts it:
“The 4-point year-over-year increase – combined with aging in place challenges’ status as the top barrier for multiple consecutive years – suggests that seniors' struggles to remain safely at home are not stabilizing but growing.”
We all want to stay in our own homes, independently, for as long as possible. But the barriers to that goal seem to be getting worse.
This is a topic I got into back in January, after a workshop with Ryan Frederick, a leader on longevity and place.
Here’s what I wrote at the time:
Most conversations focus on cost, taxes, resale value, square footage, or similar things. Rarely do they focus on how a place actually supports daily life, health, and connection over time.
That’s where place planning comes in. It’s not about convincing people to move. It’s about shifting the frame from house as asset to place as system.
Ryan talks about that system in terms of four dimensions: environment, health, community, and finances. In a recent blog post, he goes through these in more detail:
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Environment — the home and neighborhood itself. Can you move through it comfortably? Is what you need nearby?
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Health — not just access to doctors, but whether the place makes it easy to walk, eat well, sleep, and stay engaged day to day.
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Community — probably the most overlooked. Ryan asks a version of a question I love: who would notice if you didn’t leave the house for a few days?
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Finances — not just the mortgage and taxes, but the full cost of staying: maintenance, insurance, and the opportunity cost of equity that’s tied up and not working for you.
As he writes, there’s not one answer for anyone:
“The objective is not to find a universally perfect place. No such place exists. It is to identify the place that best supports who you are becoming.
That may mean moving. It may mean renovating. It may mean spending more time in another community before making a permanent decision. It may simply mean becoming more engaged with the people and resources already around you.
The important thing is to resist stasis. Place decisions made by default are still decisions, and over time they can narrow our options.”
In my experience, most people only ever think about housing in terms of one or two dimensions. And too often think they need to land on one ideal solution. Ryan’s framework helps us see the complexity, and gives us permission to try things — to do something, anything, so we can start figuring out a real plan.
I'd highly suggest reading more of Ryan's writing over at here.life. And if you want to know how I'm thinking through my own future-housing decisions, you can read my previous post, Home Is Where the Procrastinaging Is.