Make Room for 'Making Room'

Just as the housing needs of individuals change over a lifetime unprecedented shifts in both demographics and lifestyle have fundamentally transformed our nation’s housing requirements.

• Adults living alone now account for nearly 30 percent of American households.
  
  
• While only 20 percent of today’s households are nuclear families the housing market largely remains fixated on their needs.
  
  
• By 2030, 1 in 5 people in the United States will be age 65 or over — and by 2035, older adults are projected to outnumber children for the first time ever.
  
  
• The nation’s housing stock doesn’t fit the realities of a changing America.

Filled with infographics, ideas, solutions, photographs and floor plans from the National Building Museum exhibition of the same name, Making Room: Housing for a Changing America is a rallying cry for a wider menu of housing options.

Like the exhibition, which was curated with the Citizens Housing & Planning Council and funded in part by AARP Foundation, the publication introduces readers — be they residential builders or designers, community leaders or the general public — to a future that can feature a menu of housing options that better serve people of all ages and the needs of a changing America. 

Organized into four parts, Making Room begins with a look at the nation's changing demographics and household types, followed by a collection of more than three-dozen housing solutions and then a "tour" of The Open House, an interactive, furnished demonstration home that was created for the exhibition (by Clei with Resource Furniture) and could seamlessly accommodate three entirely different household living arrangements.

Please encourage others to visit this page, AARP.org/MakingRoom, so the information, ideas, examples and solutions collected here and in our "Housing a Changing America" slideshow can be seen, shared and enjoyed by people of all ages, nationwide. Check out our other free publications by visiting AARP.org/LivableLibrary

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