Housing the elderly

de Stephen M. Golant, Eric G. Moore, Mark Rosenberg, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

This study seeks to establish the main dimensions of the relations between aging and housing and the associated public responses in Canada and the United States. The study examines five major issues: -demographic aspects of aging; -the housing circumstances of the elderly; -the changing distribution of the elderly; -emerging problems of housing the elderly; -strategies for housing the elderly. The study concludes that there are two major lessons for Canadian policy-makers to learn from United States experience. One is that Canadian policy-makers should treat housing the elderly within the context of neighbourhood development and second, the need for an annual housing survey so that programs can be developed and evaluated on the basis of current conditions. For United States' policy-makers, the lesson to be learned is how important Canada's "safety net" of universal health care and social policies is to ...