From floridarealtor.org
The choices people make when deciding where to live tend to be driven by their current circumstances, such as their income, health and whether they have children.
But people tend to avoid thinking about how things will change as they get older and their needs evolve.
That issue is at the heart of an effort by AARP to encourage communities and individuals to plan for the future when they make decisions about their homes and neighborhoods.
The organization’s Public Policy Institute is working to help leaders identify issues that may make it hard for people to stay as they move through different life stages or encounter obstacles.
As part of the initiative, the institute has developed an online index that rates communities using a variety of factors, including the availability of accessible housing, public transportation, quality healthcare and good schools.
“People don’t necessarily understand what they may need years from now,” said Rodney Harrell, the institute’s director, livable communities.
The type of housing in a community — and its affordability — is particularly important to determining how livable it is, Harrell said during a recent Realtor University presentation to the National Association of Realtors because the type of home that suits a person or family will change as their lives evolve.
Transportation options are also critical, he said, because people used to driving need to have other options for getting around if they’re no longer able to do so.
Harrell said many communities offer a range of features that make them appealing to aging adults, but no one city in the U.S. has a perfect mix of livability characteristics.
Some communities work particularly well for certain people yet are challenging for others.
For example, a car-dependent suburb without public transit may be fine for people who can drive and afford a vehicle, but challenging for those who can’t drive, he said.
Another challenge for communities is that people have individual preferences about where and how they want to live — and those preferences will change over time and are affected by factors such as cost and availability.
“When you take those sets of preferences and those limitations, you end up with where people are,” Harrell said.
“A large part of our work is around building awareness (among) individuals and policy makers around how communities are structured and how that can impact the preferences of the people that are there now and will be there in the future,” he said.