Posts Tagged ‘Mobility’

Sarah Palin School of Public Policy: Stephen Harper, Tony Clement and the 2011 Census

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

The furor over the 2011 Census reminds me of Sarah Palin claiming she understood international relations because she could see Russia from her front door. That is how all of us will have to operate in the future—without benefit of actual facts guiding our decisions.

I have noted in past posts how we rely on data from the long form to analyze seniors’ housing markets, including data on income and housing. I haven’t noted though how often we rely on mobility data to understand demographic patterns affecting markets and communities. Data from the long form tells us how many people of various age groups lived at the same address five years earlier, how many lived in another community in the same province, and how many lived in another province.

Well that is just downright intrusive, Tony Clement and Stephen Harper would no doubt say. But of course it isn’t intrusive and the data helps us to avoid mistakes. In my forthcoming book I mention the case of a former client of ours who was planning to build a big seniors’ housing project in the interior of British Columba. He was sure that people from all over Canada would flock to the community, partly because his site was in BC, an assumed magnet for seniors, and partly because it was a good site, right behind the Tim Horton’s. We were able to show him, based on long form data, that his assumption was mistaken and that the prospects for his site were not good.

Normally it is a delicate matter to tell someone that their plan isn’t a sound one but this client was far from perturbed. “You have saved me millions of dollars”, he said, and that is true.

The lack of long form data in so many areas of the Canadian economy and Canadian society is going to be an extremely costly, as well as a futile, exercise.

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Seniors’ Housing Projects: Location, Location, Location–How Important is it Really?

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Conventional wisdom suggests that for supportive seniors’ housing projects (meals, housekeeping, laundry etc), walking-distance proximity to stores and services is, if not essential, then at the very least extremely important. But without sitting down and doing the math, I would say that a minority of supportive seniors’ housing projects in BC are located close enough to stores and services so that people could easily walk to them. Some are in locations that are downright pastoral. Of course walking isn’t necessary for all people—many have scooters that enlarge their geographic boundaries. Scooters though are used by a small minority of seniors, meaning that walking distance is more important than scooter distance.

As well, many seniors’ housing projects have their own buses to take people around to shopping and doctors’ appointments, many have small tuck shops that sell various items, and in any case, most meals are provided on site. So why do people need to walk anywhere? I firmly believe that the answer to that question is this: even if people don’t have to walk anywhere, the fact that they could if they wanted to is an important psychological benefit. And for those people who actually do walk to the store or the bank, it’s more than just a psychological benefit—it’s a physical benefit as well.

Proximity to green space seems to be less important than proximity to stores and services. It’s always nice to have a park to walk through but half the time the weather may preclude the walk. But proximity to schools and other places where children play is almost always considered a decided advantage because it gives people something highly enjoyable to watch. Proximity to seniors’ centres is hugely advantageous, not just because it allows residents to participate in outside events and activities, but because it facilitates two-way interaction. It’s easy to invite people living in the community and using the seniors’ centre to come for meals and events at the housing project, which is one of the very best ways of keeping buildings full.  Easy access to public transportation falls into the “it goes without saying” category, whether or not people living in supportive housing projects ever actually take a city bus. Visitors might though and staff almost certainly will.

Of course finding sites that are close to stores, services, schools, public transit, and seniors’ centres is much easier said than done. When “affordably priced” is added to the list, finding a suitable site begins to verge on the miraculous, especially in centres where land is expensive.

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2011 Census (Reprise)

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

As the government is still persisting in its wrong-headed plans to ruin the 2011 Census, I thought it would be useful to explain in a little more depth why the Census information is so critical for seniors’ housing analysis.

Here is an example of a table we always use when we are doing a market study or a community housing needs assessment.  Here are just a few of the things this table tells us:

  • 83% of the 55+ households in this community are homeowners.
  • The average income of the renters is $38,509 compared to $73,094 for the owners.
  • Single (non-family) renters over the age of 85 have the lowest average incomes.
  • Although not shown in the table, the detailed data indicate that there are 565 renter households aged 65+ in this community with an income lower than $14,999. These are the households facing serious challenges in terms of meeting their housing needs.

Owners

Renters

Family Hshlds

Non-Family

Family Hshlds

Non-Family

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

55-64

4,880

$101,729

1,030

$47,153

600

$61,629

510

$30,613

65-74

2,450

$67,633

815

$36,961

220

$41,969

405

$28,178

75-84

1,140

$63,158

1,030

$32,375

125

$35,366

265

$26,375

85+

200

$50,621

255

$24,358

60

$47,584

235

$24,220

Sadly, we will never have this level of knowledge about seniors’ housing markets in future years because all of this information comes from the long form.

For-profit and not-for-profit developers, communities, governments, market analysts—we will all be forced to guess what is going on. Tragic.

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Disability Rates: Do they Mean Anything?

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Understanding disability rates and how they affect housing market behavior, in particular moves to supportive housing or assisted living, is a very difficult thing to do. Statistics Canada tells us that 43% of the 65+ population in Canada have some degree of disability, primarily mobility, agility, pain, or hearing. Of those with disabilities, 60% are mildly or moderately disabled, while 40% have severe or very severe disabilities.  What “mild”, “moderate”, and “severe” mean is not easy to define. Statistics Canada uses a complicated rating system to categorize disabilities. At any rate, the question is how these disability rates affect housing market behavior.

To establish a context for his discussion, it’s useful to reflect on the fact that the huge majority of houses in Canada are neither “visitable” nor “accessible”, meaning they do not accommodate aging in place. So does this mean that when people become disabled in some way will they move to supportive housing? Maybe not all people, or even a majority of people, but some quantifiable proportion? Alas, no. We know that entrance into service-enriched housing such as supportive housing or assisted living is primarily need-driven, which means that people move into these types of environments not because they want to but because they have to. However that does not necessarily imply the presence of a disability—people may move because their spouse died and they are afraid to stay alone, or because they are isolated, or not eating properly, or because they have lost their driver’s license. And couples with disabilities are much less likely to move to supportive housing than individuals because they are able to help each other. If there were some way to quantify demand based on disability status we would have to adjust for the number of couples in a market area, which would further complicate an already suspect analysis.

As a result of all these confounding variables, in my view it is not possible to arrive at any conclusions at all about the demand for service-enriched housing in a community by applying national disability rates to the seniors’ population and assuming that some arbitrary proportion of that group will choose to move to service-enriched housing. Some market analysts do this I am sad to report. Be careful if you are working with one.

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Posted in Market Studies, Seniors' Housing | 1 Comment »

Are disability rates improving? And if they are, why?

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Many people (myself included) share the view that disability rates among the seniors’ population have been declining. For example, here’s a headline from a National Association of Aging document dated May, 2001: Dramatic Decline in Disability Continues for Older Americans. And what’s the evidence? Between 1994 and 1999, the percentage of Americans over the age of 65 with disabilities declined by 2.6% per year.

In answer to the obvious question: “why”?, the article suggests several possible reasons—improvements in maternal health early in the 20th Century;  better control of infectious childhood diseases; behavioural changes such as declines in the incidence of smoking; better management of diseases such as hypertension;  better drugs; and even increases in education levels.

But a recent article in Public Policy and Aging Report suggests that declines in disability rates are due not to medical science, but to “disability-friendly” environmental changes including curb cuts, disabled access ramps and elevators, and transportation services. Improvements in assistive devices (walkers, wheelchairs, scooters) have also enabled people with mobility impairments to get around better on their own.

The Public Policy and Aging Report article is focused mostly on physical impairments that impede a person’s ability to interact with the built and social environment but it also refers briefly to the positive impact of higher education levels on rates of cognitive impairment.

It is interesting to think about this. Disability is not defined as an impairment per se, but as a “social construct insofar as it reflects the ease or difficulty that individuals with physical impairments experience interacting with the built and social environment.”

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