Percentage that “age in place”

My wife asked me yesterday “did you know that 93% of seniors age in place?”. Really? That didn’t sound right. Where we live on Mercer Island (next to Seattle) there are many retirement communities, including a large one on the lake called Covenant Shores that was converted from Shorewood Apartments where I delivered newspapers more than 50 years ago. Folks in my yacht club live there, I see constant advertising for the Aegis Living, a higher end one from Era called Aljoya, and I always assumed we would end up there. On this forum the discussion is how SOON to move into one of these communities – or how MANY to get on the waiting list for. So 93%?

Some additional context: my wife is working on a MPH (Masters in Public Health) and this was for a paper she was working on, and the source is Pew Research. And that number is indeed the percentage who are aging in place. But the vast majority want to age in place.

My wife definitely doesn’t want to be in any kind of facility, my dad who passed about 6 years ago at 93 ended up in a nursing home at the end but was desperate to get back to his home where he passed under hospice care. I could go either way – I could deal with a facility and make friends easily – but…yeah…I’d prefer to stay in my home too. And at least three of my neighbors in our 17 home HOA have mentioned wanting to age in place, and perhaps we could work together to help each other?

And then my wife asked if I knew about the “villages movement” – and I’d never heard of it.  Here’s the village movement page for our county.We do not have an organization for Mercer Island (yet!), but there is one next door in Bellevue and their mission is to help other communities grow their own.

So now I’m feeling the entire retirement community thing might just be a very successful real estate development / marketing scheme targeting the anxieties of seniors.