Low-income older adults are spending record amounts of income on housing. That’s one takeaway message that LeadingAge Senior Vice President of Policy Linda Couch said she has from a report released Thursday.
Sixty-five percent of renters with annual incomes below $30,000 — which includes many older adults living off of Social Security — spend more than half of their incomes on housing, leaving only $310 per month for food, transportation, healthcare and other costs of living, according to the State of the Nation’s Housing 2024, from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
“Affordable housing matters,” Couch told McKnight’s Senior Living.
Addressing the nation’s housing situation — also including an increasing level of homelessness, an inadequate housing safety net, the growing threat of climate change — will require collaboration among the private and nonprofit sectors as well as policymakers at all levels of government, the report authors said. The publication includes information about the demographics of the older adult population, available affordable housing supply, and links between housing, health and community services, as well as the public and private responses to those challenges.
‘A system of scarcity and begging’
Affordable senior housing providers’ mission to “scrape by” and figure out how to pull deals together to preserve existing housing and build new affordable housing is more important than ever, Couch said. With no “backfill” programs to replace affordable housing units taken offline for any number of reasons, Couch said, preservation of existing affordable housing has become critical.
“Their job is not done — there is much more work to do,” she said. “It is doable, but unfortunately, the programs that exist remain too small.”
The nation’s affordable housing programs have not grown to keep pace with the need, Couch said. The result, she added, is a tendency to “treat these programs like artifacts,” focusing on preserving units rather than expanding them.
“We don’t have this ‘Advocate; let’s fix it’ mentality,” Couch said. “We have a very much, ‘We must live within these constructs’ that are fairly make-believe when it comes to what the real need is. Our federal housing safety net is and has long been in tatters.
“Our system is a system of scarcity and begging. As long as housing is not an entitlement, we are going to be clawing our way up the mountain,” she continued.
More homeowners are older adults
The report authors noted that home prices reached a new all-time high in early 2024, pushing the median sales price to about five times the median household income. On the rental side, rents remain up 26% nationwide since early 2020 and are rising in three out of every five markets.
According to the report, the number of “cost-burdened” homeowners spending 30% or more of their household income on housing and utilities grew to 19.7 million between 2019 and 2022. Almost 23.2% of homeowners are now stretched “worryingly thin,” including 27.4% of older adult homeowners.
Older adults are an increasing share of homeowner households as baby boomers (turning 60 to 78 this year) age — over the past 15 years, the share of homeowners aged 55 or more years increased from 44% to 54%, according to the report.
And older homeowners are struggling with ensuring that their homes are upgraded to be accessible and allow them to remain safely at home, the authors said. Although 22% of older adults report problems with activities of daily living, less than 4% of homes offered accessibility, according to the report. Meanwhile, paying for upgrades, including no-step entries and wider hallways and doorways, is out of reach for a growing number of older adults.
Access one of ‘most pressing challenges’
Nationwide, housing affordability remains the key challenge facing both renters and homeowners, and solutions are “desperately needed,” the report authors wrote. Households across the income spectrum will continue to struggle to find affordable housing, but the shortage will remain most acute for those with low incomes.
The report noted that although regulatory relief and technologic innovation can help increase the private supply of lower-cost housing, a need remains to expand the housing safety net.
“Ensuring that everyone has equal access to safe, affordable, stable housing is one of the nation’s most pressing challenges, and one that will require buy-in from all sectors and levels of government to resolve,” the report concluded.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies will vote on its fiscal year 2025 spending bill on June 27. the bill will be considered by the full House Appropriations Committee on July 10.
LeadingAge is urging stakeholders to ask members of Congress to support strong funding to expand the supply of affordable senior housing, as well as additional service coordinators.
