If you are rich, or if you have a generous daughter or son who is a cyber millionaire, all this is academic. There are plenty of wonderful homes available if you can afford the inflated prices of the year 2000. For all of us, whatever our ages, the availability of decent affordable housing is a most basic need. As we grow older, that basic need becomes more complicated. I suggest that there are three challenging areas that seniors should urge be considered as both California and the nation as a whole begins to address the need for more housing.
Seniors are over represented among low-income households.
Aside from Social Security and other government programs they have no economic resources. The below poverty-level income often forces them to pay 50 percent or more for rent. They simply cannot compete for decent market- priced housing. The efforts now being made to build housing for low-income seniors are ridiculously inadequate. When a new low-income senior's housing project is opened, there are usually 5 times as many fully qualified applicants as there are apartmens.