Washington is 7th most expensive state for older adults

Washington has become even less affordable for older adults over the past decade as costs of necessities such as health care and housing have soared.

The state ranked the seventh most expensive in the U.S. in 2025 for older adults who rent their home and are in good health. That’s a big jump from 11th place in 2022 and 14th place in 2015, according to a report published last month. (In 2025, the ranking excluded Washington, D.C., which was ranked higher than Washington state in previous years).

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Boston estimated the income required to afford basic needs across all 50 states in 2025, broken down by health, household composition and homeownership status. For Washingtonians over 65, this income increased faster than the U.S. average.

The state’s single renters in good health have to make $37,656 per year just to cover necessities like housing, food, transportation and health care, the report found. That’s 11% higher than the national average. A couple in good health that rents would have to make $50,856, or 8% more than the national average.

In the Seattle, Tacoma and Bellevue metropolitan area, the cost of living is unsurprisingly even higher. Single renters in good health have to make $43,404 per year, or 28% more than the national average. A couple has to make $56,196 per year, or 20% more than the national average.

Researchers calculated these figures based on the average cost of essentials for older adults drawn from federal agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau. Taken together, the numbers make up what’s known as the Elder Index,” a minimum cost-of-living benchmark for people over 65 living on their own.

“This is really a bare-bones budget,” said Caitlin Coyle, director of the Center on Demography of Aging at the University of Massachusetts and author of the new report. It includes housing, transportation, health care, food and some miscellaneous spending on clothes, hygiene and a phone bill. It doesn’t include money for eating out or vacations. “I would argue that it doesn’t account for a lot of other costs that people have.”

Even then, the bare-bones budget is too high for many in Washington.

More than half of single older adults in the state make less than the Elder Index, according to the report. People who live with a partner fare significantly better, likely benefiting from shared costs. Around 22% of couples fall below the Elder Index.

“It’s just a really bad situation,” said Tanya McGee, a coordinator for Sound Generations, a King County nonprofit that supports older adults. Most of the organization’s clients, McGee said, are people who make less than the Elder Index, including many who have no savings and rely solely on Social Security payments for income.

As a result, they may have to choose between different costs of living: paying rent or buying groceries, keeping the lights on or filling a prescription.

“It’s so expensive to live in King County,” McGee said. “It’s a struggle to keep up.”

While the cost of living for older adults has increased nationwide, it’s risen particularly fast in Washington. Since 2016, the cost of living for a single renter in good health has jumped 54.3% in the state compared to 45.7% across the U.S. For a couple, it has risen 42.7% in the state compared to 38.79%.

As a result, the state has become one of the most expensive for older adults to live in.

Rents and home payments are the primary drivers of higher costs of living, said Coyle. “We pretty consistently see that this is a story around housing as a big driver of cost.

That dovetails with the experience of many older adults in King County, said McGee. Some are squeezed when faced with year-over-year rent increases or when buildings are demolished for new developments. In Washington, more than 150,000 people over 65 are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to AARP.

Even people who have their house fully paid off might struggle to afford high property tax bills, pushed up by rising home values across the area.

There are resources available for older adults, but they can be difficult to access. Many people who earn below the Elder Index still make more than the federal poverty level. Living in this gap means that they may struggle to afford basic needs, while not qualifying for forms of assistance that would give them some relief, such as savings plans that reduce health care costs.

Many programs are also overdrawn. In Seattle, people over 62 can apply to live in income-limited housing administered by the Seattle Housing Authority, for instance. But as of the present, all buildings under the program are full, with projected wait times for vacancies stretching up to eight years.

Coyle expects that the cost of living for adults will continue to rise over the coming years. Bumping up funding for rental assistance, property tax relief and home repair programs could help soften the economic blow, she said.