Measuring What Matters: Building a Housing Stability Measure for Older Adults

Background and Purpose: One in three older adults is housing cost-burdened, paying over 30% of their income on housing, and they are the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homelessness in the United States. While conceptual models of housing stability call for multidimensional definitions that highlight affordability, stability, safety, adequacy, and neighborhood context, existing measures do not capture housing challenges that are unique to older adults. This gap limits our ability to identify risk for homelessness and assess the impact of interventions designed to promote housing stability in later life. This paper presents a recent shallow rental subsidy pilot program for older adults as a case study to describe the importance of creating and validating an accurate and comprehensive measure of housing stability for older adults.

Methods: In 2024, an Area Agency on Aging implemented a shallow rental subsidy providing a $330 monthly subsidy to case-managed, low-income, severely cost-burdened older renters. The pilot was selected as a critical case because it included an experimental design, collecting data from people who did and did not receive the subsidy, making it well-suited to interrogate definitions of stability and identify gaps between measured outcomes and participants’ housing realities. This case study uses two data sources: 1) participant surveys, which used qualitative open-ended questions and various quantitative measures of housing stability, including rent cost-burden, accessing housing resources, number of moves, and HUD’s Housing Security Index, and 2) qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews with participants.

Results: While participants in the SS group described improvements to housing stability through qualitative interviews, the study was unable to observe a quantitative change in housing stability using the housing measures. While housing-cost burden initially decreased only for the SS group, it decreased across both groups by the end of the study period. Very few participants in either group reported moving during the study period, and while fewer people in the SS group requested rental assistance, the number of people on housing waitlists in both groups remained steady. Participants in the SS group shared that the subsidy made their housing more affordable in interviews, and many said they would be forced to move without it. SS group participants also described an increased ability to meet non-housing-related basic needs while navigating limited mobility or transportation.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings highlight how existing housing stability measures are incomplete within the context of older adults. For example, housing-cost burden may not be an appropriate indicator for housing stability for older adults, considering many are on fixed incomes and do not have the opportunity to increase their income to meet the rising cost of rent. Additionally, older adults may have different spending obligations than younger adults, which may make the housing-cost burden indicator (30% of income) inappropriate. Number of moves may also be an inappropriate measure of housing stability because, as housing needs change across the lifespan, some moves may be necessary. Lastly, assessing stable housing must include shifting mobility and transportation needs, ensuring the ability to move within and around one’s home.