There is one step up to my own front door. Concrete, about six inches, poured before I bought the place.

I have never once thought about it. That is the entire finding of a government report I read this week.

The Census Bureau calls a house aging-ready when it clears a low bar. A way in with no step, and a bedroom and a full bathroom on the ground floor. That is it. No lifts, no wide doorways, nothing fitted.

About 50 million American homes clear it. That is 40% of the housing stock. In New England it falls to 19.6%, where the houses are oldest and the steps are highest.

57%

Of older households say their home meets their accessibility needs very well

 

44%

Of households aged 65 and over have an actual need for accessibility features

The Census report is subtitled Perception Versus Reality, which tells you they noticed. Four million households with somebody over sixty-five already report trouble using part of their own home.

So the demand exists and the willingness does not. Forty-four percent have a need. Six percent have a plan.

That gap is the most interesting thing in the whole aging-in-place business, and it is why nobody has cracked it with advertising.

You cannot sell a grab rail to somebody who has decided he is fine. The purchase does not follow a campaign. It follows an event.

Six inches of concrete, read down the list.

Which tells you exactly what sort of business wins this aisle, and it is not the one with the biggest advertising budget.

Two catches, and the second is the harder one. A ramp and a ground-floor bathroom rarely return their cost at sale. This is money spent on living rather than on value.

And the region with the least ready housing is also the one with the hardest houses to modify. Nineteen point six percent in New England is not an opportunity. It is a stone foundation and a narrow stair.

The arithmetic

The definition of an aging-ready home, the roughly 50 million homes or 40% of the stock that meet it, the 19.6% share in New England, the 57% of older households reporting their home meets their accessibility needs very well, the 6% with plans to renovate for accessibility, and the roughly 4 million households with an adult aged 65 or over reporting difficulty using part of their home, are all from the US Census Bureau report Aging-Ready Homes in the United States, Perception Versus Reality of Aging-Accessibility Needs, released October 2023 and based on the 2019 American Housing Survey. The 44% of households aged 65 and over with some need for accessibility features is from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, drawing on the same survey series. The point that the two figures describe the same population from two directions, and the read on who profits, are Boomers Trade’s own.

 

Watch the six percent rather than the forty-four. Need has been flat for years and it tells you nothing. The day that six starts climbing is the day this cohort stopped grading its own homework. Every contractor in the county will feel it in the same quarter. My step is still six inches. I know that now, which is more than I knew on Monday.

Andrew

Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.