Senior City

The housing stock for New York’s elderly is suddenly far less bleak.

- KAYLA LEVY

The city has grown old. More specifically, 1.2 million New Yorkers are now over the age of 65, a senior population that has gone up by nearly 30 percent in the past decade. This is an increasingly diverse group with a wide array of needs and preferences when it comes to where to live: About half of seniors speak one of 90 languages other than English at home, a quarter have advanced degrees, and thousands are part of the LGBTQ community.

Fortunately, new housing options have begun to proliferate over the past few years. On one hand, a plethora of very high-end assisted-living apartment buildings have emerged to serve the wealthiest of aging boomers. These places tend to eschew beige meals and snoozy game nights for page-long seasonal menus, classes led by Columbia professors, and marble-and-teak spas. (All of this comes at a commensurately steep price—independent studios at the Watermark at Brooklyn Heights start at $5,495 per month, while memory-care and assisted-living options balloon to more than $20,000 per month.)