While published recommendations for housing design and neighborhood planning for older people continue to proliferate, these standards and criteria are rarely subjected to empirical testing. In this study, objective field assessments, using objective measures of residential quality, measured residential resources for meeting life maintenance and higher order environmental needs of 88 elderly women who lived alone in non-institutional settings in Oakland, California. The objective measures were developed and organized according to a system of life maintenance and higher order needs based on the work of Henry Murray (1938). Using resident satisfaction variables as criteria, multiple regression analyses produced six scales for assessing life maintenance resources, and twenty scales for higher order need resources. The objective environmental scales were found to provide significant predictors of general residential satisfaction. In multiple regression analyses, scales measuring resources in the living unit for meal preparation, health, and aesthetic needs explained 41 percent of the variance in general living unit satisfaction. Resources in the neighborhood related to harm/avoidance and order explained 27 percent of the variance in satisfaction with the local area. The potential value of the environmental scales is supported by significant correlations with several global measures of psychological well-being. Numerous tables presenting the study data are appended. (Author/JAC)