Elderly housing choice: A case study of Brantford, Ontario

As Canada’s population ages, policy analysts are increasingly concerned with issues related to housing the elderly. Addressing some of these concerns, this thesis provides evidence of the characteristics of the elderly who choose to move to Senior Citizens’ Apartments (SCAs), as opposed to staying in their own homes. Choice based sampling and binary logit analysis are used to investigate the connection between the choice made and the characteristics of the elderly. The results indicate that being married and owning a car increase the odds of elderly persons staying in their own homes as opposed to moving to an SCA, while renting a home decreases them. Analysis indicates that marital status is strongly related to age, while owning a car is an indicator of independence and perhaps higher income. Renting a home, on the other hand, is related to relatively low income. Thus, those who move to SCA’s are expected to be older, widowed females with reduced personal independence and relatively low income