Local estimates of the functionally disabled elderly: toward a planning tool for housing and support service programs

In order to allocate housing and support service funds, local planners need to know the number of elderly at various levels of functional disability. When the levels of disability are sufficiently specific, the need for specialized housing and support services can be identified, the proper funding priorities can be established, and new support programs developed. Locally administered surveys to determine functional disabilities are cost prohibitive, so estimates using secondary data are often used. This paper describes research to improve the accuracy of synthetic estimates of elderly with functional disabilities while expanding the number of functional ability levels used to describe the population.