A new tactic in the Bay Area's housing crisis

This article discusses "Age in Place" covenants (sales?): an elder person can sell the property, yet remain in the property until their death. After which, the property is transferred to the buyer.

Could increase homes available for sale in Marin County.

This seems to me to raise the same concerns as fungible life insurance, where a buyer purchases an existing life insurance policy before the death of the policy holder. The insured person gets liquidity, often for end-of-life expenses, and the buyer gets the face value of the insurance policy when the insured person dies.

People of my parents' generation didn't have the option of investing in mutual funds, not really until the 1990s. So they would often purchase a "whole life" policy, and they would pay the insurance premium each month or year or whatever. The insurance provider would charge a bit more - an additional premium - than they would for a straight insurance policy based on their statistical model, and would invest the premium into a variety of assets, which would hopefully appreciate in value over a long term. After a period of time, this investment return would be made available to the policy holder in monthly payments: a nice way to supplement a modest pension.

Reverse life insurance would give the insured a lump-sum payout, usually less than the projected value of the policy, and the buyer would become the beneficiary of that policy. This was big during the AIDS epidemic (also in the Bay Area), where someone who had paid into an investment for decades would be faced with million-dollar medical expenses for the short, painful time remaining to them.

No estate passes on to the next generation. That seems to be gone, along with the other hallmarks of an American Middle Class.