ABSTRACT
People need housing throughout the life cycle, and what they need from that housing changes over time. Yet the menu of residential options is often too static, rigid, and limited to respond to these changes. What would it mean to configure housing to adapt to households’ evolving spatial requirements, risk tolerances, health challenges, and financial statuses? How could greater flexibility in the built environment enable communities to deliver better residential services to their populations? Elder housing offers a illuminating window into these questions and their answers. Addressing life-stage correlated housing mismatches could help to loosen the larger supply constraints – and failures of imagination – that have perpetuated housing crises across the country.
Fennell, Lee Anne, Space Over Time: Housing For the Life Cycle (September 17, 2025), University of Chicago Law School, Public Law & Legal Theory Research Paper No 25-36; University of Chicago Law School, Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No 25-29; Elder Law Journal (forthcoming 2026).
Leave a Reply