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Senior Housing Industry is Open to New Ideas
New generations plus financial challenges are sparking new approaches.
The industry that brought you the 55+ senior housing development and the Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) is having its problems. That may be to our advantage.
Demography isn’t one of those problems. Between baby boomers and millennials, there are more older adults than ever in the prospect pool for senior housing. What is a problem is that 86% of older adults can’t afford what’s on the market today. Not only that, most older adults don’t even want the product. For the 75% of adults age 50 or older who prefer to live their remaining lives in their own home, a senior housing community is the option of last resort. (Moreover, technology advances now make it more possible than ever to stay in your own home longer.)
The senior housing sector took a big hit during the Covid-19 pandemic. Fear of infection, high mortality rates in nursing homes and memory care facilities, and lockdowns sent demand tumbling. Occupancy rates returned to pre-pandemic levels only last year. With millions more baby boomers aging into the prospective market for housing, you might expect the industry to build more capacity. But that is not happening. At current development rates, only one-third of the projected 560,000…
