Aging-in-Place Guide for Building Owners, produced by AIANY for the NYC Department for the Aging, and Enterprise Community Partners’ Aging-in-Place Toolkit link aging, health, and the built environment by addressing physical limitations, diminished mental capacity, and auditory and visual impairment, and incorporating suggestions for design modifications. Both of these new guidelines, as well as AARP’s 2015 HomeFit Guide, which offers affordable solutions for designing homes to suit senior citizens’ changing needs, will be presented and discussed in detail at this launch.

Recent research indicates that as people age, they prefer to continue living independently in their own homes; to age in place rather than move to an assisted living facility or nursing home. The guidelines to be discussed at this panel outline inexpensive changes to NYC’s housing stock and illustrate why aging adults need and deserve good design to live independently and with dignity in their homes and communities.