Residential Relocation of Community-Dwelling Older Adults: The Role of Physical Function and the Housing Environment.

Objective: Most older adults in the United States (U.S.) prefer to remain in their current housing as they age, but difficulty with mobility (e.g., walking) may make this more challenging. We estimated the association between difficulty with mobility (mobility) and residential relocation in the following year.

Methods: We included adults aged ≥65 participating in ≥2 rounds (years 2011-2019) of the National Health and Aging Trends Study. Mobility was self-reported and change in permanent address was captured by study staff. We used a prospective cohort design and logistic regression with a clustering correction to estimate adjusted associations.

Results: We did not find evidence that mobility was associated with relocation versus no relocation in our sample of 26,444 observations from 5699 older adults. However, mobility was positively associated with moves to housing with fewer environmental barriers.

Discussion: Mobility is associated with relocation to housing that is more accessible and may be an indicator of greater need for supports to age in place.