Housing characteristics and the well-being of elderly tenants in federally assisted housing.

The relationship between sponsorship, community size, building size (number of dwelling units) and height of building, on the one hand, and six indices of well-being of elderly tenants, on the other, was examined in a study of 2457 subjects from 154 federally-assisted housing projects. Control was exercised on a variety of personal variables prior to the examination of the environmental relationships to well-being. Private nonprofit sponsorship was associated with higher friendship scores and greater activity participation. Tenants in smaller communities had higher friendship scores, greater housing satisfaction, and greater activity participation. Housing satisfaction was greater in projects that were smaller in terms of total number of units but was not related to size when size was defined in terms of elderly-designated units. Thus, only marginal support for Barker's undermanning hypothesis was found. Greater height of building was associated with lower housing satisfaction and less neighborhood motility.