Century Lives

By 2030, every Baby Boomer will be 65 or older. Many of these older adults will live alone and on limited incomes, and many will have mobility and other health challenges. This so-called “silver tsunami” is here to stay, and the math is ominous. The nation already has a housing shortage—and a senior-care shortage. On the plus side, many of these older folks will be healthier and more active, engaged, and tech-savvy than their peers in prior generations. But since their housing needs and preferences will also differ from those of their predecessors, new questions and challenges will arise. On Century Lives: The Home Stretch, we explore signs of hope and inspiration in communities where housing innovations for older adults are already afoot.

Older adults are the fastest-growing age group falling into homelessness: The population of unhoused older adults is expected to triple from 2017 to 2030. We discuss its roots in the shortage of housing in the U.S. and visit San Diego to learn about some solutions to the growing crisis of senior homelessness.

There is nowhere near enough housing available in the U.S. for low-income older adults. Even people who qualify for government subsidies often cannot find a place to move (and what is available often lacks the support services an aging community needs). In episode 3 of Century Lives: The Home Stretch, we visit 2Life Communities in Boston, a developer that has developed low-income housing for older adults for decades. 2Life is held up as a model for what low-income housing for older adults can be: attractive, safe, engaging, and even joyous. We visit 2Life to learn how they can create low-income housing for older adults when so many other developers struggle.

The forgotten middle—seniors with too much money to qualify for the government-subsidized housing offered to low-income folks, and too little to afford market-rate housing accessible to the wealthy—is a growing population. In this episode, we travel to Minnesota to explore housing solutions for the forgotten middle. Can we make housing affordable to this group of older adults—or will they have to figure out creative solutions for themselves?

Age segregation in housing is a relatively new phenomenon in human history. Until very recently, people aged with their families in intergenerational communities. Today, we visit two very different places: the age-restricted community Latitude Margaritaville in Florida and Gorham House in Maine, a retirement and assisted living facility built around the concept of different ages living together.

What is it about architecture that celebrates longevity?

The world’s most famous architect, Frank Gehry, was actively at work until his death at age 96, finishing his Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi and still designing the greatest works of his career. Masters Frank Lloyd Wright and Phillip Johnson also worked into their 90s and were even more prolific than Gehry.

In this special series, Century Lives introduces Victoria Newhouse, a renowned architectural historian. At age 87, Victoria chats with her contemporaries: the late Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Moshe Safdie, Peter Eisenman, and Raj Rewal—all renowned architects and all in their 80s and 90s.

In the final episode of this five-part series, Victoria Newhouse talks with visionary architect Rem Koolhaas, who has been shaping and disrupting architecture for his entire career. At age 80, he is the youngest of Victoria’s guests and remains a prolific writer and one of the world’s most influential architects with multiple new projects, including the expansion of NYC’s New Museum, opening Fall 2025.