senior housing a major care issue

Clearly one of the major issues in the senior care area is senior housing. The growing number of seniors are going to need a growing amount of senior housing, assisted living, and nursing home space. I know I am coming back to the senior housing topic, but the housing crisis in this country makes it even worse.

For many seniors, their major asset is their house, and that is the thing they always assumed that they would leverage to pay for senior care when they needed it. The problem is that this is a very bad time to sell a house so the reserves that they though they had are not there, or not as large. If forced to sell their house to pay for care or to transition to some form of senior housing, they are losing a lot of the value that would (hopefully) return if they could just wait. Even those seniors who want to borrow against the equity in their house are finding that much more difficult and providing much less value.

In terms of resources for senior housing, I did come across this page at the New Hampshire seniors resources project. It provides links to local resources for senior housing. Hopefully this can help people in New Hampshire, though I think they need to add more listings.

One thing that I think seniors will not have to worry about but that was pointed out to me as a funny thing to look at by a friend is this page on world of warcraft addiction, which is funny but not so funny as I know a young couple who seem to be spending a lot of their time playing the game.

It is worth a moment of levity when thinking about the growing senior care problem and the senior housing crisis that is looming.