Niche senior housing: The wave of the future

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This week in the Home section, reporter Rosemary McClure dives into the future of senior housing, focusing on the Nikkei Senior Gardens (pictured above), which opened last year in Arleta and was designed to appeal specifically to Japanese American retirees.

‘In the future, there will likely be niche communities for nearly every interest group,’ said Andrew Carle, who directs the assisted-living and senior-housing program at George Mason University in Virginia. Niche housing currently represents only a small segment of senior housing -- less than 1%. ‘But I believe it will grow to as much as a third of the market in the next 30 years,’ he told McClure.

Among the communities already being served are artists and poets (Burbank Senior Artists Colony), university alums (more than 80 university-based communities are open or on the drawing board including facilities at Stanford and UCLA), gay and lesbian seniors (including affordable housing such as Triangle Square, a 104-unit structure in Hollywood, and upscale developments such as RainbowVision Santa Fe), and RVers who are getting a little too old to drive.

Read the full senior housing story here.

-- Deborah Netburn

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