ITEM FILE PHOTO
The site of Coast Guard Housing in Nahant.
As baby boomers age, communities are taking different approaches to determining how to allow elders to stay in their neighborhoods.
In Marblehead, developers are headed to state Land Court to overturn resistance to an assisted living project. In Nahant, a Town Meeting will reconsider zoning for single-family homes and condominiums.
As Town Administrator Jeff Chelgren noted, Nahant has “very few options for empty nesters looking to stay in town and to downsize.”
Nahant and Marblehead are coming at the same problem from different directions. They face the challenge of finding locations for housing tailored by developers to older residents. The challenge is one faced by communities nationwide. It is a problem driven by demographics and cannot be ignored.
The time has arrived for people with big-picture perspectives to wade in and urge municipal officials and developers to take a wider view of the baby boomer housing challenge.
Like blind men feeling their way around an elephant and describing it by turns as a snake and a tree, Nahant and Marblehead are grappling with the same problem differently. The residents Chelgren has in mind when he talks about the Coast Guard housing site’s future use are younger versions of the people Marblehead developers have in mind when they proposed assisted living.
State housing officials and Metropolitan Area Planning Council experts can provide sound advice about how city and town officials can proceed with designing plans to house an aging population.
There was once a time when people got older, they sold the family house and moved in with their children. That trend has eroded as people live longer and retirements that once spanned a decade now stretches into a quarter century. Housing experts must help municipalities plan to house people who could retire today and still be alive in 2040.
Tackling that task will involve innovative solutions. Community leaders must sit around tables and talk about regional, not just community challenges posed by aging residents. Developers and municipal officials must look at the big picture and agree on shared goals.
But before they do, municipal officials, developers and housing experts should ask baby boomers where they want to live in the future.
