Eighty-five percent of adults aged 50 or more years think it is important to have active adult communities, assisted living communities and communities with shared facilities and outdoor spaces where they live, according to a recent national poll.
Twenty-seven percent of adults in that age group who participated in AARP’s 2018 Home and Community Preferences Survey said that having such communities nearby was “extremely important” to them personally, 35% said it was “very important” and 23% said it was “somewhat important.”
The survey included 762 people in that age group. One percent reported already living in senior living communities.
The percent of participants supporting active adult and assisted living stayed strong even when considering all survey participants aged 18 or more years. In that larger age group, the percentage that considered active adult and assisted living important remained at 85%, with 28% saying such communities are “extremely important,” 32% believing they are “very important,” and 25% indicating they are “somewhat important.” Survey participants aged 18 or more years totaled 1,947.
Nonetheless, 76% of participants aged 50 and older said they would prefer to remain in their current residences, and 77% said they would like to live in their communities as long as possible, although only 59% anticipated that they will be able to do so.
Fifty-six percent of those 50 and older said that, as an alternative, they’d be willing to consider villages that provide services that enable aging in place, 32% said they would be willing to think about home-sharing and 31% said they would be open to building an accessory dwelling unit.
