Age-restricted community
A neighborhood that may lawfully require residents to be over a certain age, usually 55 or 62.
What it means
Housing discrimination law generally forbids treating families with children differently. Age-restricted communities operate inside a narrow exemption for housing for older persons, and the exemption comes with conditions the community has to keep meeting.
The common shape is 55-plus: at least one resident over 55 in at least eighty per cent of occupied homes, plus published policies and periodic age verification. A 62-plus community requires everybody to be over 62 and has no eighty per cent allowance.
Why it matters
It decides who may inherit and then live in the home. A house that passes to a forty-year-old child can usually be owned by them and not occupied by them, which turns an inheritance into a sale.
The rules sit in the community's own recorded documents as well as in federal law, so two communities in the same state can answer differently.
When you are likely to meet it
- When a parent moves into a 55-plus or 62-plus community.
- When a home in one is inherited.
- When a caregiver or an adult child wants to move in.
How this varies by state
The federal exemption sets the floor; state fair-housing law and the community's own recorded documents can be stricter.