East Clarke Place in MarketWatch
The story of this 112-unit, affordable senior building helps illustrate the dire need for this type of housing.
The excerpt below is from:
Affordable senior housing faces crisis-level demand and scarce supply: 26,000 applications for 84 units
by Jessica Hall, MarketWatch
East Clark Place Senior Residence. Photo by Ari Burling.
When East Clarke Place Senior Residence opened in the Bronx in 2021, offering affordable housing for older adults with low and very low incomes, it got 26,000 applications — 200 of them handwritten — for 84 affordable residential units. The residents were chosen through a lottery.
Tenants who reside at East Clarke Place must be at least 62 years old and earn 60% or less of the local area’s median income. No one pays more than 30% of their income toward rent.
The enormous demand for units in the Bronx housing development compared with its scarce supply is “really reflective of the national trend,” said Linda Couch, the senior vice president of policy and advocacy at LeadingAge, a community of nonprofit aging-services providers and other mission-driven organizations serving older adults.
The need for senior housing is growing as the population ages. The U.S. needs 156,000 senior-housing units of all types — not just affordable housing — by 2025, and as many as 806,000 additional units by 2030, the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care estimates.