With our european housing market, that old lady or man might not even be able to move to a smaller size, even if they wanted to. Or, they might have a ton of kids and grand kids sleep overs, or kids that need to move back (happens a lot in our country) because they cannot find a place to live, so i generally try to be careful not to assume things when i don't know details. It's something that is basically the fault of our politicians, who could see this problem coming decades ago, but decided not to act. It's not always the fault of people that are stuck in a house that became too big and can't move because there just is no smaller appartment available, but the people who voted for politicians who let buildings be bought up by greedy investors. Edit to clarify my agreeing with your points