Conversion of residential neighborhoods into affordable assisted age-in-place communities

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a new senior housing and service product for the aging population of the next decade. The thesis starts with an overview of the senior housing industry in its current condition in 2011. It discusses the demographic characteristics of the population, the senior housing trends across the world, the changing needs and desires of the baby boom generation, the different housing products available for the elderly, the entitlement programs, and financing methods for development and operations of senior housing. Then it focuses on the Boston senior housing and assisted living industry, and looks specifically at 5 active case studies that range from housing to service providers: 2 senior housing projects, 2 assisted living projects and 1 village service provider to understand their specific models of operations, financing and designs. The case studies are analyzed and compared in how they serve the user and the developer from the perspective of affordability for the user, extent of subsidies used by the developer, appropriateness of design, extent of services and ability to service people with dementia or Alzheimer. The thesis then zooms in even further into the Cambridge, MA community and identifies senior housing problem for the middle income level of society. Using all the tools learned from the global industry and the Boston metro area case studies we suggests a new senior housing product that will solve the challenge of serving the elderly population, while allowing the residents to age in place in an affordable assisted setting.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Real Estate. Program in Real Estate Development.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Getz Schoen, Yael

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dennis Frenchman.

• Center for Real Estate. Program in Real Estate Development.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68188

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/68188