Make Room for 'Making Room'

Just as the housing needs of individuals change over a lifetime unprecedented shifts in both demographics and lifestyle have fundamentally transformed our nation’s housing requirements.

• Adults living alone now account for nearly 30 percent of American households.

• While only 20 percent of today’s households are nuclear families the housing market largely remains fixated on their needs.

• By 2030, 1 in 5 people in the United States will be age 65 or over — and by 2035, older adults are projected to outnumber children for the first time ever.

• The nation’s housing stock doesn’t fit the realities of a changing America.

Filled with infographics, ideas, solutions, photographs and floor plans from the National Building Museum exhibition of the same name, Making Room: Housing for a Changing America is a rallying cry for a wider menu of housing options.

Like the exhibition, which was curated with the Citizens Housing & Planning Council and funded in part by AARP Foundation, the publication introduces readers — be they residential builders or designers, community leaders or the general public — to a future that can feature a menu of housing options that better serve people of all ages and the needs of a changing America. 

Organized into four parts, Making Room begins with a look at the nation's changing demographics and household types, followed by a collection of more than three-dozen housing solutions and then a "tour" of The Open House, an interactive, furnished demonstration home that was created for the exhibition (by Clei with Resource Furniture) and could seamlessly accommodate three entirely different household living arrangements.