Missing Middle Housing Could Help Older Owners and Young Buyers

By 2034, the U.S. population aged 65 and older will outnumber children under 18 for the first time in history. That demographic shift is straining systems like Social Security, healthcare—and yes, even housing.

Almost 1 in 3 older households is cost burdened by their home. At the same time, younger adults are spending longer in their parents’ homes as high prices delay their path into housing of their own.

Those trends are usually treated as disparate problems—an affordability crisis for young buyers and renters, and an aging-in-place challenge for older homeowners. But the two groups are often searching for the same thing, according to Rodney Harrell, vice president of family, home, and community at AARP’s Public Policy Institute.

“The big enemy here is a lack of the kind of housing supply that we need, the range of options, particularly in those locations that work for folks,” he tells Realtor.com®.

Harrell argues that baked into America’s housing shortage—currently estimated at 4.03 million units—is a life cycle problem. People’s housing needs change as they age, form families, become caregivers, face health changes, lose income, or decide they no longer want to maintain a large home. Yet many neighborhoods offer only one kind of place to live.

As the country mobilizes to close its housing gap, it will need to build homes that can serve people across every stage of life, Harrell argued at the recent National Association of Realtors® Legislative Meetings.

In his words, “The idea is we look at this life cycle of housing, can we create communities that have all of those features that people need, that’s really what we’re trying to make happen, so that more people have more options, so they’re better able to meet those needs.”

A housing stock built for one stage of life

“We’re about to celebrate our 250th anniversary for this country, and for most of that time, many communities got by with the assumption that many people were younger, many families were younger,” Harrell explains. “But it’s become more and more the reality across the country that we’re people of all ages.”

In the last quarter-century alone, the median age of Americans rose from 35.6 in 2001 to 39.4 in 2025, census estimates show. And while other systems might be more adaptable to that kind of rapid change, housing has yet to catch up.

“Housing is one of those products, if we think about it as a product, that isn’t easily changeable,” Harrell says. “We might be able to change a device or something else quickly and easily, but changing our housing stock takes a long time.”

To his point, AARP’s research finds that 85% of neighborhoods contain only single-family homes. That can leave few nearby alternatives for a homeowner who wants less space, fewer stairs, less upkeep, or a lower monthly cost—the same constraint that leaves few attainable options for a younger household looking to move in.

“If we built a lot of our housing without some of the features that people need as they age, without options for people that might want to downsize, without affordable options, without options that are near the things that people want to be near, if they can’t drive, all of these are gaps that we can’t just fix overnight,” Harrell says.

The headline housing shortage, in other words, contains a more specific shortage: homes that let people change their circumstances without having to leave their communities.

For older owners, the mismatch can become a physical and financial bind. Three-quarters of adults 50 and older want to remain in their homes and communities as they age, yet only 1% of U.S. homes have the full set of accessibility features identified in AARP’s research.

“I’ve had people talk about their dream home become that nightmare because they’re in here and they can’t leave their home, but they can’t get up the stairs and they can’t afford it somewhere else in their community,” Harrell says.

Younger adults face the other side of the same shortage: too few attainable homes near jobs, family, and the places where they want to build their lives.

“One of the things that’s most frustrating is when we pit different groups together, pitting young adults against older adults, for example,” Harrell says. “Well, the challenge is a younger adult that doesn’t have enough housing options that they can afford to move into near the things they want to be near has some of the same challenges that an older adult who wants to downsize into a home.”

“Both of those folks have the same challenge,” he says.

The missing middle as a bridge between life stages

That’s where duplexes, townhomes, small apartment buildings, condominiums, and accessory dwelling units come in.

Often called missing-middle housing, these units can create a path between a detached family house and a large apartment building. For younger adults, that can mean a smaller, potentially less expensive entry point. For older owners, it can provide a way to downsize or live closer to relatives without leaving the community.

“I don’t like calling it missing anymore, because I’m hoping there’s more and more middle housing coming up,” Samar Jha, governmental affairs director at AARP, tells Realtor.com.

“What this allows is that you will have an intergenerational housing, like in a development, you can have more, both older adults and younger generation living together in the same community,” Jha says.

Accessory dwelling units can play a particularly flexible role, creating a separate home on an existing property for an older parent, caregiver, adult child, or tenant. But Jha stresses that downsizing need not mean moving into a backyard unit.

“Downsizing does not only mean going to the ADU,” he adds. “Downsizing can also mean, you know, living in a duplex or a triplex or a tiny home.”

Aging in place requires more than one house

Carol Marak, a financial educator who is aging on her own at 74, is a good example of the importance of the kind of optionality that both Jha and Harrell highlight.

Speaking with Realtor.com in March, Marak said she realized that much of her wealth was tied up in a house that offered little liquidity for the professional support she expected to need as a solo-ager. After saving aggressively for five years, she sold the home and moved into a downtown Dallas high-rise, closer to public transit, doctors, and community.

Her move illustrates a point often lost in conversations about aging in place: The goal is not always to stay in the same house, but to remain connected to the community.

That distinction is central to AARP’s Livability Index, which evaluates housing alongside transportation, access to grocery stores and parks, healthcare, neighborhood conditions, environmental quality, social engagement, and economic opportunity.

Dallas earns a 54 on the index, placing it in the top half of U.S. communities. Its housing score is bolstered by a broader mix of homes: Nearly half of available units are multifamily, compared with a U.S. city median of just under 9%. The city also has zero-step entrances in 75% of homes, compared with a median of 56% across U.S. cities.

While those features may not make Dallas a perfect fit for every resident, they gave Marak a broader set of choices when her needs changed.

Great Neck Plaza, NY, meanwhile, earns the index’s highest score, 73, even while scoring low on housing affordability and access. Despite those challenges, its high ranking is driven in large part by access to parks, libraries, stores, and other daily necessities.

Those pros and cons are the point of the index, according to Harrell.

“If this place has great parks and grocery stores that might be really expensive, and so those are always trade-offs,” he says. “One thing we want to do is to show people the trade-offs that they’re making.”

In Jha’s words, “Buying a house is one thing, and staying a homeowner is another thing. You can buy a house, but staying a homeowner requires a lot of other elements to it.”

It’s a concise summation of the opportunity beneath the broader housing shortage—and of the choices the Livability Index is designed to illuminate. Communities with a wider range of homes can give residents more ways to respond when their income, health, caregiving needs, or household size changes, without losing the relationships and routines that make a place feel like home.