On one of the NYT blogs in the "New Old Age" series, someone ("been there" in Boston) posted a very wise comment I thought worth passing along. The original post was entitled "No Place Like Home."
Think about it with respect to public policy such as California's Proposition 13.
I've added a bit of formatting to make it easier to read.
I understand the current sentiment for "growing old in place", but I really believe we need to rethink the idea of spending limited resources trying to keep elderly people living in the homes they raised their families in. This feel-good concept actually has several drawbacks in a variety of areas. As larger numbers of baby boomers move into retirement these issues will only get worse.
- First, with one or two elders living in a three or four bedroom home, young growing families have too few move-up houses available to them so they build new houses in the exurban ring which 30 years down the road will exacerbate the real estate pull back as the boomer generation passes and the baby bust can't replace their numbers.
- Second, as this article points out, access to services and health care is terribly expensive and inefficient when those needing a high level of health care are in single family homes.
- Third, the stress of owning a home that an elder cannot adequately repair or maintain becomes a constant low level of stress in their lives.
- Fourth, all too often, the elderly are stuck in a financial situation where the ongoing costs of their primary home are wrecking their budget. Reverse mortgages with their high fees and lousy financial terms are a terrible solution. We need to develop a wider array of 55+ housing solutions at a wider selection of price points and housing styles in the communities where elders live so they can maintain the relationships that nurture them while providing housing situations that allow them access to all the services they will need.
I couldn't have said it better! Policies which significantly favor older homeowners over their younger fellow community members (e.g., California's Proposition 13 or Florida's Save Our Homes) drive up housing prices, monthly housing expenses, commuting expenses, pollution, sprawl, commuting time, profits for mortgage lenders. They lead to the premature need for adding infrastructure, destroying farmland, spending public money to enrich private entity landholders.
If our incentives instead encouraged the prompt and ongoing redevelopment of choice sites, well-served by taxpayer-funded infrastructure and services, there would be affordable, appealing housing for people of all ages and stages, all places on the income spectrum. It wouldn't be single-family houses downtown; it might be midrises or highrises, close to all the amenities which make downtown areas good places to live: medical care, restaurants, entertainment, libraries, emergency services, etc.
We just need to rationalize -- make rational! -- our system of incentives and privileges. We ought to align our incentives with where we want to go, and with what eliminates privilege for some which are funded by burdens on others. (Some of our privileges are so things we're so used to that we don't see that they burden and victimize others. Private collection of land rent and natural resource value is in that category.)
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