More homeowners modify houses to "age in place"

The Seattle Times/The Orlando Sentinel: "The new catch phrase among homeowners is 'aging in place.' Instead of selling their homes and moving into retirement villages or assisted-living quarters, a growing number of older Americans are modifying their homes to make them more user-friendly as they age. The concept has caught on so successfully, it even has its own National Aging in Place Week, which falls on Oct. 11-16 this year." Karen Kassik, president of Home Accessibilities, a residential design firm that focuses on building barrier-free homes, says that "the inspiration for the firm was Kassik's experience with her own mother, who moved into Kassik's newly remodeled home in Casselberry, Fla., while recovering from foot surgery in 2002" (Patteson, 7/21). 

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.