ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of elderly housing conditions nationwide, paying particular attention to strains on the pocketbooks of the poor. If their residential needs are in some respects unique, they also reflect a national housing malaise that discriminates less by age than by class. Speculation, inflation, and gentrification have all had their innings, and all have contributed to an alarming shortage of decent, reasonably priced housing. Housing is a serious problem for a sizable minority of older Americans, who as a group occupy 21 percent of the nation's 88 million dwellings. Housing and Urban Development has also tabulated some of the housing deficiencies that beset elderly owners and tenants alike. Mrs. Marie C. MaGuire's time in office happened to coincide with elderly housing's golden years. In a characteristic move to make subsidized housing more "cost effective," the lawmakers raised rents from 25 percent of a tenant's income to 30 percent.
