Building for every chapter.
Housing has not kept pace with the people who live in it. America’s homes, roads, and public services were built for a younger, growing population organized around the nuclear family, and for a life that moved through fixed stages: school, then work and family, then retirement. But this is not the norm today. The population grew just 0.5% in the year ending July 2025, the slowest rate since 2021, as immigration dropped. Births offer little cushion: The fertility rate fell to a record low in 2025. Meanwhile, Americans are living longer than ever, with life expectancy reaching a record 79 years in 2024. Fewer births and longer lives are shifting the balance between generations. Older adults now outnumber children in 11 states and nearly 45% of counties nationwide, up from three states in 2020. More families are sharing a roof across those generations: more than one in five Americans now live in a multigenerational household, up from 13% in 1970. Some scholars argue that the nuclear family, and the step-by-step life built around it, no longer fits how people live, and that society should stop organizing opportunity by age and move toward a “postgenerational” model.
That shift is harder to build than to imagine. Infrastructure takes decades to plan and lasts far longer, and much of today’s zoning descends from federal model codes written in the 1920s. Meanwhile, homes themselves are aging along with their owners. The U.S. housing stock is the oldest on record, with a median age of 44 years, and the oldest homes are disproportionately occupied by owners least able to pay for repairs. Baby boomers in one- or two-adult households own roughly 28% of the nation’s homes with three or more bedrooms, and few smaller homes exist for them to move into. Older owners hold a disproportionate share of the nation’s homes, especially large ones. That squeezes younger buyers today and will strain older owners tomorrow, as they age in houses that no longer fit them. Japan shows where this leads: Roughly 9 million homes, about 14% of its housing stock now sits vacant as older owners die and heirs decline to occupy or maintain what they inherit.
America must plan for the country it is becoming, separating what is temporary (such as the baby boom’s hold on the large-home stock) from what will last. That requires a census that counts what matters, plans built on scenarios, zoning that ends the single-family default, policy that makes both staying and moving possible, and support for new models of living.
The agenda
Count everyone, and measure what matters. Planning starts with measurement. The Constitution requires a count of every person living in the United States every 10 years, regardless of citizenship, and census data guided more than $2.2 trillion in federal funding in fiscal 2023. Between censuses, the American Community Survey tracks how Americans live, and the American Housing Survey tracks the quality and cost of their homes as the housing stock ages. That foundation is under strain. In September 2026, the Census Bureau proposed rules for 2030 that would stop counting immigrants without green cards, remove questions on race and ethnicity, use tax records to decide where people live, and drop guidance for counting people in complex living arrangements. Changes to the way residence is measured matters when America’s households no longer follow one pattern: About one in eight children lives in a household headed by someone other than a parent (most often a grandparent) and the 2020 census already missed 5.4% of children under 5.
America should count everyone and expand what it measures. The 2030 census should count every resident and keep clear rules for people who live across more than one household. The American Community Survey and American Housing Survey should add measures of functional ability, caregiver availability, and whether people can afford to stay in their homes. New questions should run alongside existing ones until the two series can be reconciled, because even well-intentioned revisions can distort the data: A 2023 proposal to change the survey’s disability questions could have cut the measured disability rate by about 40%. Measuring function rather than identity also captures the many older adults who don’t see themselves as disabled.
Imagine the breadth of futures. While America’s population will continue to be older throughout the century, policy decisions and other factors could produce a range of scenarios. We should track, forecast, and plan accordingly. The Census Bureau’s 2023 projections put the 2100 population anywhere from 319 million to 435 million, depending mostly on immigration. The agency now expects net immigration of just 321,000 in 2025-2026, the lowest in more than 60 years apart from 2020. Housing demand rises and falls with those assumptions. In the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ low-immigration scenario, demand supports 950,000 new homes a year through 2035 and 610,000 a year in the decade after. Low birthrates also meaningfully change communities. Even in Texas, where Houston has been one of the fastest-growing metros, K-12 enrollment is falling: Austin is closing or consolidating 10 schools this school year. Meanwhile, households headed by someone 80 or older are projected to grow by nearly 60% in 10 years. Climate-related impacts must also be taken into account. Flood-prone counties gained residents from 2020 through 2023, then lost a net 63,357 domestic residents in the year ending mid-2025, while low-risk counties gained the most since 2018.
Federal and state infrastructure funding should require plans tested against a range of futures, with immigration, birth rates, climate risk, and age structure modeled county by county. National averages hide where the pressure lands: About half of rural counties lost population in the year ending mid-2025, leaving communities facing hospital closures and labor shortages. For every long-lived investment, from a water plant to a subdivision, the test is whether it still works whenthe population is older, smaller, or somewhere else, and whether it can be converted if it doesn’t. Japan offers a working model. Since 2014, its municipalities have drawn up plans to concentrate homes and services in walkable centers as their populations shrink. Toyama paired a new light-rail line with incentives that steered development into its center and along transit corridors, and older residents who moved downtown received discounted transit fares.
End the single-family default. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law in July 2026 without the president’s signature. It is the first major federal housing law in more than a decade. It adds no new funding. Instead, it directs HUD to publish zoning best practices that update the 1920s federal model codes. It creates a pilot that raises or cuts Community Development Block Grant funds by up to 10% depending on housing growth, and it funds pre-approved housing designs. It does not override local zoning.
The law sets direction, but states and cities decide what gets built. States should use HUD’s frameworks to legalize middle housing, such as duplexes, townhomes, and small apartment buildings, along with backyard cottages and in-law units, and approve them automatically when they meet code, without special hearings. Smaller homes near services let an older owner stay in the neighborhood, house a caregiver on the same lot, or rent space for income. HUD’s pre-approved designs should include adaptable and multigenerational plans, to adapt for every life stage.
Back new models. Most older Americans want to stay where they are, often resulting in a naturally occurring retirement community (NORC). New York State has created a blueprint for leaders seeking to develop, manage, and evaluate NORC programs by bringing health and social services to communities that have naturally evolved over time into a place where a large portion of the residents are 60 or older. This includes both private and public funding and engaging residents to help shape the programs rather than simply receive services. Supportive services in NORCs should be standard infrastructure, funded through the Older Americans Act wherever a building or neighborhood crosses an age threshold.
Americans are already reinventing how they live. The number of people in multigenerational households quadrupled between 1971 and 2021, reaching 18% of the population. One-third of adults in those homes cite caregiving as a major reason. Policy should make these models easier to build and finance. Zoning and building codes should allow a second kitchen and a separate entrance. Lenders should have clear underwriting rules for multigenerational ownership. University-based retirement communities are another model. Roughly 100 retirement communities have university ties, though only a few dozen are closely integrated. The model can fail: the Village at Penn State filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Colleges facing the enrollment cliff should treat older learners as a lasting market.