Affordable senior housing faces crisis-level demand and scarce supply: 26,000 applications for 84 units

By Jessica Hall

'It's one of the worst environments of housing availability'

When East Clarke Place Senior Residence opened in the Bronx in 2021, offering affordable housing for older adults with low and very low incomes, it got 26,000 applications - 200 of them handwritten - for 84 affordable residential units. The residents were chosen through a lottery.

Tenants who reside at East Clarke Place must be at least 62 years old and earn 60% or less of the local area's median income. No one pays more than 30% of their income toward rent.

The enormous demand for units in the Bronx housing development compared with its scarce supply is "really reflective of the national trend," said Linda Couch, the senior vice president of policy and advocacy at LeadingAge, a community of nonprofit aging-services providers and other mission-driven organizations serving older adults.

The need for senior housing is growing as the population ages. The U.S. needs 156,000 senior-housing units of all types - not just affordable housing - by 2025, and as many as 806,000 additional units by 2030, the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care estimates.

"Nationally, there is a severe shortage," Couch said. "The lower your income, the harder and harder it is to find a home. It's very easy to be too poor to meet rent requirements."

About 6.6 million older adults spend more than half their income on rent, Couch said. A total of 2.35 million older adults have worst-case housing needs - those who are below 50% of the area's median income and spend half their money on housing, according to Couch.

"A mishap, a speed bump, could trigger them into homelessness," Couch said.

Lenny Williams, who had been homeless for four years, was one of the first residents to move into East Clarke Place, according to a video interview with Volunteers of America-Greater New York shared with MarketWatch. He calls fellow residents his family.

"A place like this lets a person come in, have a decent place to live, rest their head, cook their own food. That independence keeps them living," Williams said in the video interview. "It's like a little family and that's important, too, because a lot of people in this building don't have family anymore."

The 14-story East Clarke Place rental building in the Bronx also offered another 37 units that were fully furnished and set aside for older adults who were chronically homeless. They also benefit from a range of supportive services for healthcare and mental-health services offered in the building.

The $69.5 million development was funded through grants and city and state funding, as well as a low-income-housing tax credit and private-activity bonds.

From the archives (January 2024): Bipartisan tax deal could lead to 200,000 new affordable rental units. It's a 'modest and important' effort, expert says.

A second development, on Andrews Avenue in the Bronx, will open to residents by the end of the summer. The developers are marketing the building now and expect a surge of applications for its 118 units, said Julia Oliver, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of VOA-GNY, an anti-poverty organization developing the buildings.

"We expect to be overloaded and flooded with applications," Oliver said.

The new $81.1 million building will open at a time when the overall vacancy rate in New York City is 1.4%, Oliver said. "It's one of the worst environments of housing availability," she added.

East Clarke Place is unique in that it was built with amenities to tackle social isolation among older adults. It also meets the Americans with Disability Act's standards for accessibility; has 24-hour front-desk staffing; and incorporates alternative-energy elements like a solar-panel system on the roof and a rainwater system that will irrigate the landscaping.

Fernando Villa, a principal at the architecture firm Magnusson Architecture and Planning, which designed the building, said he created spaces to promote social interaction among residents. There are lounge spaces on each floor, common spaces, outdoor space and a green roof terrace.

"Affordable housing is good design," Villa said.

Each floor has areas for rotating cultural activities such as music, art supplies and reading areas, as well as a community room and program staff to provide activities for residents.

The space is "purpose-built for helping low-income seniors age with dignity," Oliver said.

"Low income doesn't have to be a lack of quality. The trauma, the poverty, homelessness, mental illness, feeling less than all their lives - it's a privilege to treat them with quality and dignity," Oliver said. "Being built in the Bronx allows the residents to stay in their own community as they age, because a move would be another trauma."

These two housing developments, however, are a drop in the bucket of the need for affordable housing in New York - let alone the United States.

"To think the private market will figure out how to serve that market is putting our head in the sand," Couch said. "We cannot expect the private market to solve this problem on their own. They can't build it and operate it out of a problem. We need more public subsidy."

"The political breeze has been blowing against us for decades. The lack of affordable housing keeps getting worse," Couch added. "We are not building housing to make strides. We are relying on preserving housing, and that's not nearly adequate."

Overall need for affordable housing - across all ages - totals 7.3 million units, Couch said. The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care couldn't provide a figure for the number of affordable-housing units needed for older adults.

Nearly 11.2 million older adults in 2021 were cost burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their household income on housing costs, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. That's an all-time high, and a significant increase from the 9.7 million recorded in 2016.

The population of Americans ages 80 and older will grow to nearly 24 million people by 2035, double the amount in 2016, according to the Census Bureau. Many of those older adults will live alone, have limited incomes and experience health issues such as limited mobility, the Harvard center notes.

"The people are on these waiting lists that can be years long, and they are tired of waiting," Couch said.

This story was produced with support from Columbia University's Age Boom Academy.

-Jessica Hall

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04-25-24 1446ET

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