Cincinnati metro's population is aging. Will there be enough housing for older residents?

When Beverly Geckle was evicted from her apartment in Newport's Victoria Square, she didn’t know what she was going to do.

“I was in panic mode. I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Geckle, 66, said.

As a senior, not only did she have to find people to help her move from Victoria Square, she also had to find a place in a price range that met her fixed income.

Geckle wasn’t alone. She and the other residents evicted from Victoria Square’s 232 units last year joined a growing trend of Americans struggling to find places to rent.

Nationally, vacancies fell in 2021 to 5.6%, which was the lowest rate in four decades, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. In the Cincinnati metro area, asking prices rose by more than 10% the next year. Nationwide, the Pew Research Center cited that nearly 1 in 4 renters spent more than half their salary on housing in 2020. Hamilton County is short 31,200 affordable housing units, according to a 2021 American Community Survey estimate.

Demographics have also been shifting in Greater Cincinnati, the 2020 U.S. Census showed, with people living longer and the younger population decreasing, growing the pool of people seeking housing.

Long waiting lists and demographic changes leave senior renters in limbo

Census data revealed that the median age has been increasing over each decade, reaching past 38 both nationally and in Cincinnati in 2020 – more than three years older than the 2000 census.

“The trend is the older people are aging, they’re healthier. Health care and the availability for people has obviously extended their lives for the first time that we’ve seen in a long time,” Anjie Britton, vice president of marketing and communications at Life Enriching Communities, said.

Britton has seen this increase in life expectancies at Life Enriching Communities, a senior living services organization that houses two of its locations in Montgomery and Cincinnati. Britton said senior living communities have helped with this median age increase.

“We haven’t seen this many people in the kind of 70-year-old range, so people are living longer,” Britton said. “If people live in community with other people, they’re happier and healthier.”

Cincinnati's higher median age was still below the rest of Ohio's metro areas, except Columbus. Here's how Cincinnati's median age compared to other metro areas in Ohio and surrounding states:

• Dayton-Kettering: 39.6.

• Cincinnati: 38.2.

• Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson: 37.0.

• Lexington-Fayette: 36.5.

• Columbus: 36.2.

Geckle found her new home at Highland Village, a senior living community in Highland Heights. The community is part of Neighborhood Foundations, which seeks to revitalize properties in the area and create affordable rental housing, with options to help renters finance the homes.

Kelly Speier, property manager of Highland Village, says the building has been popular, filling all of its available rooms. Low rental prices, listed as a maximum of $660 per month, attract renters.

“I could fill another building in Highland Heights with my waiting list alone,” Speier said. “These tax credit buildings are a lifesaver. These residents pay 30% of their income here.”

There's also more competition for housing. While the under-18 population dropped in Cincinnati over the past decade, there are now more than 100,000 more people over age 18 who are potential renters or buyers.

Part of the reason Speier’s waitlist is so large is because renters are running out of options, says Tom Guidugli, executive director of Neighborhood Foundations.

“There’s a shortage,” Guidugli said. “The market is saturated with tenants looking for places to live that they can’t find, especially in the urban court.”

'There isn't much turnover.' Longer lives mean less room

The healthiness of residents leaves them occupying rooms longer, too. Because most older residents aren’t looking to move, rooms in senior living communities aren’t always available.

“When I have a vacancy, it’s normally because somebody has passed away, somebody has went into assisted living or they’re going to live with one of their kids," Speier said. "It’s not because they gave me a 30-day notice.”

Websites like Seniorly have tried to combat the struggle for seniors to find housing. Senior living advisors like Mark and Rachel Healy help seniors find options for places to live. They say the problem isn’t necessarily finding available places but finding places that are affordable.

“There are definitely more senior living communities available,” Mark Healy said. “The area where we see an issue is the lower-income housing.”

Housing hard to afford on fixed income

They added that assisted living places are nice but have the drawback of being difficult to afford without a steady job or paycheck.

Geckle has experienced her own concerns affording housing. Having to pay for utilities and other expenses further takes from money needed to pay rent as well.

“We’re all on a fixed income, and the prices of everything have gone up,” Geckle said. “We’re lucky if we have enough money to pay our bills through tomorrow.”

Rachel Healy says she sees instances where seniors just don’t have the money to afford the places they need at their age. She suggests saving as a potential fix for this.

“People haven’t saved. People didn’t have the ability to work for whatever reason,” Rachel Healy said. “Some people are spending money on their children and aren’t recognizing the need to save for themselves.”

Other factors aside from money have also impacted this market. Besides a general lack of housing, the number of single renters and homeowners has been increasing in recent years. In 2022, the percentage of households with only one person hit an all-time high of 30%.

Guidugli grew up seeing homes shared by families. With this increase in individuals living alone, he's worried about an even greater need for available housing.

“I think the solution is to start building more housing and trying to get families to stay together too,” Guidugli said. “When I was a kid, grandparents stayed with family to help support so the kids would have somebody home when they came home from school and all those other things if two families were working.”

If population trends continue, more people may be left without homes in the current housing market. Property managers’ waitlists will continue to fill up.

“There’s people that are homeless,” Speier said. “It’s a crisis out there, it really is. Somebody needs to do something.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati area's affordable housing crunch hits aging residents