The Senior Housing Shortage: Why Aging in Place Is Becoming the Default
Most people who age in place do it by choice. But a growing number are aging in place because the alternative — moving into senior housing or a nursing home — simply isn't available. The population needing that housing is growing fast, and the supply of it is shrinking. Here's what the data shows, and what it means for home safety.
The 65+ population is growing quickly
By 2035, older adults are projected to outnumber children in the U.S. for the first time in the country's history — about 78 million people 65+ versus 76.4 million under 18, according to AARP and S&P Global demographic projections. The group that most often needs assisted living or skilled nursing — adults 80 and older — is growing even faster: the first Baby Boomers turned 80 in 2026, and NIC MAP projects that population will grow by roughly a third by 2030 and nearly double by 2040, adding about 5 million people within five years and 13 million within fifteen. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies projects that households headed by someone 80+ will more than double between 2021 and 2040, to nearly 17 million.
Meanwhile, facility capacity is shrinking
Senior housing (independent and assisted living): Occupancy has climbed above 90% while new construction has fallen every year since 2021 — from over 30,000 units started to roughly 10,000 last year, largely due to rising construction costs, according to Multifamily Executive. Simply holding occupancy near its current 90% level would require about 576,000 additional units by 2030 and over 1 million by 2035. NIC MAP estimates the cumulative investment needed through 2050 at more than $1 trillion.
Nursing homes: Since 2020, at least 774 nursing homes have closed, displacing over 28,000 residents and eliminating more than 62,000 beds, according to the American Health Care Association (AHCA/NCAL). Today, 46% of nursing homes are limiting new admissions and 57% have waiting lists. Only 37 new nursing homes opened in 2023, compared with 73 in 2020. Since February 2020, 40 U.S. counties — 85% of them rural — have become what Skilled Nursing News calls nursing home "deserts," with no facility at all.
Our estimate: how many households the capacity gap pushes into aging in place
This is our own back-of-envelope estimate, not a published figure — shown here with the math so you can judge it yourself.
Demand: about 576,000 new senior housing units needed by 2030, and over 1 million by 2035, just to hold occupancy steady.
Likely supply: at a construction pace of roughly 10,000–25,000 new units a year, an estimated 50,000–100,000 units get delivered by 2030.
Shortfall: roughly 475,000–525,000 households by 2030, growing to about 800,000–1,000,000 by 2035 — people who would have moved into senior housing but can't find a unit, and stay home by default. On top of that, tens of thousands more households are shut out of skilled nursing entirely because of the lost beds and waitlists, likely skewing toward higher-acuity cases.
This cuts both ways: Baby Boomers may use senior housing less than prior generations did, which would shrink the gap. But affordability points the other way — median household income for people 80+ was about $37,100 in 2022, according to EHDOC, which will push many more people to stay home regardless of whether space exists.
Most people will age at home anyway — in homes that aren't ready
The capacity gap above is really just the sharp edge of a much larger picture. A 2024 AARP survey found 75% of seniors prefer to stay in their own homes as they age, and the Harvard Joint Center notes that only about 2% of older adults live in group quarters like nursing homes at any given time — rising to roughly 1 in 12 at age 80. In other words, the housing shortage affects a meaningful minority; staying home is already the norm for almost everyone else.
The problem is that most of those homes aren't equipped for it. About 44% of 65+ households have some accessibility need due to disability or difficulty using part of the home, per Harvard's analysis — but fewer than 4% of U.S. homes have basic accessibility features, and only about 1% have all five key universal design features: no-step entry, single-floor living, lever handles, wide halls and doorways, and accessible controls.
What this means in practice
Whether someone ends up aging in place by choice or because senior housing wasn't available, the home itself rarely changes to match. That gap — a home built for a 35-year-old family, now housing someone who can't safely navigate its stairs or bathroom — is exactly what a home safety checklist and a Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist are built to close. With supply constraints unlikely to ease before the 2030s, checking whether a specific home is actually ready is becoming less of an optional step and more of a practical necessity for a growing number of families.
See where your own home stands. Our free checklist covers 12 common hazards in under two minutes.
Take the free checklist →Sources: America's Health Rankings; U.S. Census Bureau projections as reported by S&P Global and AARP; NIC MAP Vision; Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies; Multifamily Executive; American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL); Skilled Nursing News; EHDOC; Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.