Most older adults have a clear preference about how they want to spend their later years: at home. According to AARP’s 2024 Home and Community Preferences Survey, 75% of adults 50 and older want to remain in their current home as they age, and 73% want to stay in their current community — which tells you this isn’t a passing trend, it’s what most families are already trying to plan around.

Why aging in place is the default preference

The reasons families give for wanting to stay home are rarely complicated: familiarity, independence, staying near friends and a community, and — very often — cost. Moving into a facility is a major financial and emotional decision, and for a lot of families it’s simply not the first choice if there’s a reasonable way to avoid it.

AARP’s survey also found that a large share of older adults expect they’ll need some kind of support to make staying home work long-term — things like home modifications, personal safety systems, and in-home help with the tasks that get harder to manage alone (cooking, bathing, dressing, getting around the house, running errands). The wish to stay home is nearly universal; making it work usually requires a plan, not just a hope.

Where to start: New York’s public resources

Before looking at private options, New York has a genuinely useful starting point: NY Connects, the state’s official “no wrong door” resource for long-term services and supports. It’s free, and it can point families toward benefits counseling, local Offices for the Aging, transportation, meal programs, and home care options based on where they live.

• NY Connects — the statewide, no-cost starting point for long-term care questions.
• NYC Aging (Aging Connect) — 212-244-6469 or 311, plus a network of over 300 older adult centers offering free programs, meals, and caregiving support.

These public resources are a good first call for any family that’s just starting to figure out what “support at home” could look like for their situation — whether that ends up meaning a home care agency, a caregiver support group, transportation assistance, or some combination.

Where home care fits in

For a lot of families, the piece that actually makes staying home workable is a dependable person coming into the house on a regular schedule — someone to help with daily routines, keep an eye on things, and simply be there. That’s the role a Home Health Aide (HHA) or Personal Care Aide (PCA) plays, and in New York it’s available through a few different paths:

• Medicaid waiver programs for those who qualify, including NHTD (Nursing Home Transition and Diversion), TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), and EISEP (Expanded In-Home Services for the Elderly Program, non-medical, no MD order required).
• Private pay, for families who want to arrange care directly without going through a waiver program, on their own schedule.

Both paths lead to the same basic goal: consistent, trustworthy help at home so that moving isn’t the only option on the table.

How Touch of Love Homecare fits into the picture

Touch of Love Homecare Agency is a NYS DOH-licensed home care agency based in Brooklyn, serving families across Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester. We work with NHTD, TBI, and EISEP waiver clients, and we also serve private-pay families directly at $32/hour with a 4-hour minimum.

If your family is somewhere in the process of figuring out whether aging in place is realistic — whether you’re just starting to research, already working with NY Connects or a local Office for the Aging, or ready to talk about a caregiver — we’re glad to have a straightforward conversation about what that could look like.

Related reading

• Signs It Might Be Time for Home Care
• How Much Does Home Care Cost in New York?
• Home Care vs. Assisted Living: How to Decide