Capably Aging in Place

By 2030, every Baby Boomer will be 65 or older. Many of these older adults will live alone and on limited incomes, and many will have mobility and other health challenges. This so-called “silver tsunami” is here to stay, and the math is ominous. The nation already has a housing shortage—and a senior-care shortage. On the plus side, many of these older folks will be healthier and more active, engaged, and tech-savvy than their peers in prior generations. But since their housing needs and preferences will also differ from those of their predecessors, new questions and challenges will arise. On Century Lives: The Home Stretch, we explore signs of hope and inspiration in communities where housing innovations for older adults are already afoot. The ability of older adults to age in place at home and their community can be threatened by a single fall or mobility challenge. But sometimes the difference between a house that’s manageable and safe and one that’s not comes down to small things, like a grab bar, a hand railing, a rug that’s tacked down, or a robotic vacuum. Fifteen years ago, a nurse at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore came up with a unique, low-cost approach to making these kinds of changes in seniors’ homes, and it’s now a nationwide program called CAPABLE. The savings they’ve proven in hospitalizations and nursing home costs are astounding. As they like to say: Home is where the health is.