Is Senior Housing Affordable?

When we talk about affordable housing, the conversation usually centers on two groups of people. We talk about low-income families struggling to pay the rent, and young adults who cannot afford to purchase their first home.

But there's another demographic that rarely receives the same attention. It's a demographic that's growing rapidly, and one where the affordability challenge becomes more complicated with each passing year.

I'm talking about seniors.

We are owners and developers of senior housing, including assisted living and memory care facilities. One of our facilities charges approximately $8,000 per resident per month.

Clearly, at that price point, we're not talking about affordable housing in the conventional sense.

But here's something important that often gets lost in the discussion about senior housing affordability.

The building itself is not the primary reason the monthly fee is $8,000. The lion's share of that expense is the cost of providing services.

We're talking about around-the-clock staffing, personal assistance, meals, housekeeping, supervision, medication management, and specialized memory care.

These are not optional luxury amenities. They're essential components of the product being delivered.

When someone says senior housing is unaffordable, they're often combining multiple fundamentally different things: the cost of housing, the cost of food and the cost of care.

Because affordable senior housing is only part of the equation.

What we're really confronting is the affordability of aging itself.

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