The impact of age-concentrated, publicly assisted housing on older people's social and emotional well-being.

Publicly assisted housing sites that were similar in environmental and background characteristics of (N = 131) residents but that varied in the proportion of within-residence elderly adults were used to ascertain the social and psychological influence of low, medium, and high densities of elderly adults in different apartment buildings. Using a comprehensive measure of social networks, the research documented that residence in age-concentrated housing, especially high density senior citizen housing, was associated with larger numbers of friends, more active friendships, and slightly better morale but not with distinctive qualitative or structural aspects of social networks. Residents of more age-dense housing did not place more emphasis on health as a social value as suggested by Rose's aged subculture hypothesis nor did they voice greater fearfulness of future poor health as a function of the greater salience of ailing cohorts as compared with respondents in less age-dense residences.