Well-being of older people in suburban planned housing

A survey was conducted to determine which characteristics, personal or environmental were more associated with the subjective well-being of older people living in subsidized planned housing. Two hundred and thirty-two people responded to a self-administered questionnaire at two sites, Spook Rock and Walnut Hill located in Rockland County, a suburb of New York City. As expected, the intervening variable health was found to be most significant to subjective well-being, explaining eleven percent of the variance for the Spook Rock-Walnut Hill sample. In stepwise hierarchical regressions, when health was reported poor to fair , environmental variables emerged as the more significant, explaining eight percent of variance. Personal variables explained eight percent of the variance for subjective well-being when the reported level of health was good to excellent . These findings provided further support for Lawton\u27s theoretical model of person-environment, that environment becomes more important to subjective well-being when the person\u27s level of health is lower. These findings have important implications for social work practice since promoting social interaction, facilitative management of living environments, and enhancing residential well-being are the basics of social work practice