By 2030, every Baby Boomer will be 65 or older. Many of these older adults will live alone and on limited incomes, and many will have mobility and other health challenges. This so-called “silver tsunami” is here to stay, and the math is ominous. The nation already has a housing shortage—and a senior-care shortage. On the plus side, many of these older folks will be healthier and more active, engaged, and tech-savvy than their peers in prior generations. But since their housing needs and preferences will also differ from those of their predecessors, new questions and challenges will arise. On Century Lives: The Home Stretch, we explore signs of hope and inspiration in communities where housing innovations for older adults are already afoot.

The ability of older adults to age in place at home and their community can be threatened by a single fall or mobility challenge. But sometimes the difference between a house that’s manageable and safe and one that’s not comes down to small things, like a grab bar, a hand railing, a rug that’s tacked down, or a robotic vacuum. Fifteen years ago, a nurse at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore came up with a unique, low-cost approach to making these kinds of changes in seniors’ homes, and it’s now a nationwide program called CAPABLE. The savings they’ve proven in hospitalizations and nursing home costs are astounding. As they like to say: Home is where the health is.

By 2030, every Baby Boomer will be 65 or older. Many of these older adults will live alone and on limited incomes, and many will have mobility and other health challenges. This so-called “silver tsunami” is here to stay, and the math is ominous. The nation already has a housing shortage—and a senior-care shortage. On the plus side, many of these older folks will be healthier and more active, engaged, and tech-savvy than their peers in prior generations. But since their housing needs and preferences will also differ from those of their predecessors, new questions and challenges will arise. On Century Lives: The Home Stretch, we explore signs of hope and inspiration in communities where housing innovations for older adults are already afoot.

Older adults are the fastest-growing age group falling into homelessness: The population of unhoused older adults is expected to triple from 2017 to 2030. We discuss its roots in the shortage of housing in the U.S. and visit San Diego to learn about some solutions to the growing crisis of senior homelessness.

There is nowhere near enough housing available in the U.S. for low-income older adults. Even people who qualify for government subsidies often cannot find a place to move (and what is available often lacks the support services an aging community needs). In episode 3 of Century Lives: The Home Stretch, we visit 2Life Communities in Boston, a developer that has developed low-income housing for older adults for decades. 2Life is held up as a model for what low-income housing for older adults can be: attractive, safe, engaging, and even joyous. We visit 2Life to learn how they can create low-income housing for older adults when so many other developers struggle. 

The forgotten middle—seniors with too much money to qualify for the government-subsidized housing offered to low-income folks, and too little to afford market-rate housing accessible to the wealthy—is a growing population. In this episode, we travel to Minnesota to explore housing solutions for the forgotten middle. Can we make housing affordable to this group of older adults—or will they have to figure out creative solutions for themselves?

Age segregation in housing is a relatively new phenomenon in human history. Until very recently, people aged with their families in intergenerational communities. Today, we visit two very different places: the age-restricted community Latitude Margaritaville in Florida and Gorham House in Maine, a retirement and assisted living facility built around the concept of different ages living together.

What is it about architecture that celebrates longevity?

The world’s most famous architect, Frank Gehry, was actively at work until his death at age 96, finishing his Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi and still designing the greatest works of his career. Masters Frank Lloyd Wright and Phillip Johnson also worked into their 90s and were even more prolific than Gehry.

In this special series, Century Lives introduces Victoria Newhouse, a renowned architectural historian. At age 87, Victoria chats with her contemporaries: the late Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Moshe Safdie, Peter Eisenman, and Raj Rewal—all renowned architects and all in their 80s and 90s.

In the final episode of this five-part series, Victoria Newhouse talks with visionary architect Rem Koolhaas, who has been shaping and disrupting architecture for his entire career. At age 80, he is the youngest of Victoria’s guests and remains a prolific writer and one of the world’s most influential architects with multiple new projects, including the expansion of NYC’s New Museum, opening Fall 2025.

What is it about architecture that celebrates longevity?

The world’s most famous architect, Frank Gehry, was actively at work until his death at age 96, finishing his Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi and still designing the greatest works of his career. Masters Frank Lloyd Wright and Phillip Johnson also worked into their 90s and were even more prolific than Gehry.

In this special series, Century Lives introduces Victoria Newhouse, a renowned architectural historian. At age 87, Victoria chats with her contemporaries: the late Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Moshe Safdie, Peter Eisenman, and Raj Rewal—all renowned architects and all in their 80s and 90s.

In this episode, Victoria Newhouse talks with 93-year-old architect, theorist and professor Peter Eisenman, who holds a place in architectural history as one of the New York Five, and the founder of Deconstructivism. He’s the recipient of the Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. And he has made a lifelong commitment to teaching, serving on the faculty of Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Cooper Union and Cambridge. He now teaches at Cornell University in Manhattan, where he plans to adapt his newest course on the genealogy of architecture as the subject of his 28th book.

What is it about architecture that celebrates longevity?

The world’s most famous architect, Frank Gehry, was actively at work until his death at age 96, finishing his Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi and still designing the greatest works of his career. Masters Frank Lloyd Wright and Phillip Johnson also worked into their 90s and were even more prolific than Gehry.

In this special series, Century Lives introduces Victoria Newhouse, a renowned architectural historian. At age 87, Victoria chats with her contemporaries: the late Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Moshe Safdie, Peter Eisenman, and Raj Rewal—all renowned architects and all in their 80s and 90s.

In this episode, Victoria Newhouse talks with 90-year-old Raj Rewal: one of the most distinguished Indian architects of all time. He is the architect of Delhi’s most important Modern buildings and with many masterpieces published in the History of World Architecture. His work, recently displayed at an exhibition of Post-Colonial architecture at MoMA, is displayed in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Raj talks about his latest creative passion – miniature paintings and drawings inspired by historical Indian works of art.

What is it about architecture that celebrates longevity?

The world’s most famous architect, Frank Gehry, was actively at work until his death at age 96, finishing his Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi and still designing the greatest works of his career. Masters Frank Lloyd Wright and Phillip Johnson also worked into their 90s and were even more prolific than Gehry.

In this special series, Century Lives introduces Victoria Newhouse, a renowned architectural historian. At age 87, Victoria chats with her contemporaries: the late Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Moshe Safdie, Peter Eisenman, and Raj Rewal—all renowned architects and all in their 80s and 90s. 

In this episode, Victoria Newhouse talks with 87-year-old Israeli-Canadian-American architect Moshe Safdie, who remains unstoppable with new projects from Singapore to Bentonville, Arkansas. He’s the recipient of the Gold Medal, the highest honor, from both the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the American Institute of Architects. Moshe discusses his Marina Bay Sands complex in Singapore, where expansion is about to begin on what’s become Singapore’s national landmark. The huge hotel’s three towers include a casino, a conference center, a shopping mall, an art museum, and a spectacular rooftop infinity pool that overlooks the scenic bay.

What is it about architecture that celebrates longevity?

The world’s most famous architect, Frank Gehry, was actively at work until his death at age 96, finishing his Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi and still designing the greatest works of his career. Masters Frank Lloyd Wright and Phillip Johnson also worked into their 90s and were even more prolific than Gehry.

In this special series, Century Lives introduces Victoria Newhouse, a renowned architectural historian. At age 87, Victoria chats with her contemporaries: the late Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Moshe Safdie, Peter Eisenman, and Raj Rewal—all renowned architects and all in their 80s and 90s.

In episode 1 , Victoria Newhouse talks with Frank Gehry in one of the final interviews of his life. He died just a few months after this conversation, at the age of 96. Frank and Victoria had a friendship spanning more than 40 years, traveling the globe together to visit his buildings. Frank discusses his $1 billion Guggenheim Museum about to open in Abu Dhabi, and other pivotal moments in his extraordinary career.

Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a generation ago. By 2030, the entire Baby Boomer generation will be 65 and older.  By mid-century, more than 80 million Americans will be over the age of 65.  By any prevailing definition, the United States will be a country full of older adults.  But what does it mean to be old in an era of much longer life?   

Welcome to Century Lives: The New Old, from the Stanford Center on Longevity! I’m your host, Ken Stern. In this season, we interview six extraordinary people who are challenging the way we think about aging—and inspiring new ways we can live our supersized lives.

Today: Margaret Cho. She is a Korean-American comedian, actress, musician, advocate, and entrepreneur. Most of us know her from her stand-up, where she pokes fun at topics like race, sexuality, body positivity, and politics. Decades after her network debut, she’s still using comedy as activism.