The new report from Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Improving America’s Housing, 2019, shows that Americans over 55 spend $152 BILLION per year on improving their homes. These people are already remodeling. It seems a no-brainer to encourage these homeowners to update their homes for “modern longevity”. Because these folks are ready, willing and able to spend their own money, they make up the low hanging fruit of the senior market. Educating and incentivizing them to do it just a little better should not be difficult. It will glean health care savings for the economy, reduced misery, hardship and discomfort for the families and improve the business climate for age friendly technology by creating places better designed to meet the real life needs of older Americans.
There is precedent. The Hartford Insurance Company Center for Mature Market Excellence partners with the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology to provide homeowner education at the time of a claim to impact decision-making about home modification.
HomesRenewed VP Susan Kimmel and I used this new data to highlight HomesRenewed at the Intercompany Long Term Care Insurance conference this week in Chicago. This simple, great idea was well received in our conversations with insurers, actuaries and claims administrators. A strength of the HomesRenewned Coalition is the broad interest in updating homes. Through the coalition Long Term Care Insurers, Homecare agencies, remodeling, technology, healthcare and more business sectors join consumers in saying:
“It is fundamentally unjust to continue medical miracles that add years to lives without also updating homes to live those lives joyfully with dignity.”
It’s good economics too!
HomesRenewed’s challenge AND opportunity is to bring this broad constituency to support home updates on Main Street, Wall Street and Capitol Hill.
YOU can help make it happen!
JOIN HomesRenewed. Support your voice for updating America’s housing infrastructure.
