Emergencies such as natural disasters and public health crises disproportionately affect older adults, often exacerbating anxiety due to vulnerability and uncertainty. Although place of residence is known to shape experiences of crisis, little is understood about how home-dwelling and residential care-dwelling older adults experience and manage anxiety differently under emergency conditions. This qualitative study explores these differences, focusing on domains of perceived safety, access to immediate support, social isolation or engagement, and crisis management quality. Employing in-depth interviews with older adults from both settings during a recent urban heatwave, findings reveal nuanced interactions between institutional context, relational support, and the subjective experience of security. While home-dwelling elders reported anxiety rooted in isolation and fears about access to aid, residents of care facilities described tensions between increased access to support and loss of autonomy, with the quality of institutional crisis management proving decisive. These results suggest that policies and interventions should transcend the dichotomy of “home versus institutional care,” instead targeting the lived realities of support, connectivity, and organizational flexibility during emergencies.