Cooperative Aging

What and why

    The purpose of this blog is to spotlight innovative approaches to housing and community that enable people to hold on to their independence and friendships as they age.

    My friends and I have been feeling the first quivers of mortality as our kids begin to leave the nest.  For so long, home has been peopled by these children that we've nurtured and shared our lives with.  The immediate challenge of the coming few years will be to redefine that home and our lives without the kids present.  But looking further ahead, what will happen in a couple of decades, when the kids are still gone but we are frail and older?  

    We're all watching or have watched our parents run up against this -- as houses become too difficult to maintain, illness swoops in,  partners are felled,  driving and traveling become a challenge.  What's that line about how getting old is not for the weak?

    For years I've had a dream that a group of friends and I would buy an old summer camp and retrofit it so that we each had a cabin of our own but the main mess hall was turned into a little center for us where we could hang out, wave at each other from our wheelchairs, and get help from our aides who would come in and assist us there or maybe cook great meals for us. Kind of a self-defined retirement community. It would be in a nice place so that our kids and grandkids would look forward to spending their vacations there.  There would be guestrooms and bunkrooms so our visitors would have a place to stay.

    Everyone I mention the idea to is enthusiastic, but in truth it's a huge project, a huge commitment, and most of us don't have extra money floating around to invest in buying such a property. Creating a community like this would entail  a host of decisions to be hammered out regarding ownership, governance, and liquidity.  Further, the reality of land prices dictates that such a property would almost certainly be a substantial distance from where we all live right now, calling for yet another kind of suspension of disbelief.  

    But it turns out that there are people who have actually done this, and who have a name for it:  retrofit cohousing.  It also turns out that there are a lot of other great, innovative ideas for aging in community out there that people are trying out -- right now!:   aging in place, built-from-scratch co-housing, interest-based retirement communities and more.  In this blog, I want to highlight some of these efforts.

Pocket neighborhoods

    A recent book by Ross Chapin, Pocket Neighborhoods, explores a range of ideas for living in a way where you feel connected to your neighbors.  

The book's subtitle is 'Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World,' and the reader indeed emerges with a sense that there are multiple ways to skin that cat.  Certainly, co-housing is given its due. But for people who are looking for a connection that is more bounded, the descriptions of neighborhoods created around walk streets or shared courtyards  will provide a launchpad for new daydreams.

Challenges in a Christian community

Here's an article about strains that arose in a cohousing community over the appropriate level of shared religious commitment to expect of community members. 

Elderspirit cooperative in Virginia

The ElderSpirit cooperative in Virginia, which has been occupied since 2006, is one of only a handful of dedicated elderhousing cooperatives that have gone beyond the planning phase to the point of fruition.  Here's a story about it.

If you share Elderspirit's values, and are looking to buy into a community, it seems very well-priced:  This two bedroom townhouse, walkable to town, library, farmers market and more, was recently listed for less than $110,000. 

You can read more about ElderSpirit at its website.

Fear and loathing in CCRCs

    This week the New York Times published, both in its online The New Old Age blog and in the newspaper's print edition, a shocking and upsetting story about discrimination in a a high-end Virginia continuing care retirement community (CCRC).  Residents who reside in the assisted living or nursing home sections of the CCRC are being excluded from dining with the 'able-bodied' residents, even if they are cognitively unimpaired, and even if that means they cannot sit with their able-bodied spouse.

    The article quotes an administrator who proffers ridiculous excuses for the policy, but most shocking is a quote from an eighty-year-old resident who is past president of the facility's Resident Advisory Council, who, the article says, "took pains to point out that three independent living residents with health problems are also excluded from the dining room, while many who do use it require wheelchairs or walkers."

“It happened to me twice in one week that somebody at the next table threw up,” requiring hasty clean-up by the maintenance staff, she said. Another time, she said, someone’s wheelchair got tangled in a tablecloth at Sunday brunch and nearly pulled all the food off the buffet table.

“I should be able to have what we call quiet enjoyment,” she said.

    The Times story generated many outraged comments online.  Several of the commenters noted that this appalling discrimination, so similar to high-school cliquishness, also masks able-bodied residents' fear of seeing what awaits them down the road.  One poster wrote,

There I go for the grace of God. It's best to include everyone who lives in the same home in the same dining room. It's clearly discriminatory to say you are not welcome anymore because you had a stroke or the dementia got worse or you are arthritic. One can choose where to sit. We all go out the same way we came in: depending on each other. Look the droolers in the eye and say good evening. Small acts of love are performed in these dining rooms by the grace of humans.

    Several commenters noted that religious-affiliated CCRC's (Kendal, and Episcopal-linked communities) have policies designed to ensure the continued mingling of residents with and without disabilities.

Virtual villages

The Los Angeles Times has a good story today about Ashby Village in Berkeley, CA, a senior 'virtual village' that is representative of an increasing trend of service networks intend to promote aging in place.  The article quotes a researcher as saying that the number of such 'villages' is growing exponentially.

The virtual village in Berkeley is one of 65 nationwide, with 120 more in the works. The volunteer-driven networks are meant to help seniors continue living in their homes by delivering a multitude of services they no longer can do for themselves and to help them stay engaged through social events.

What started with the first village in 2001 in Boston has become a fast-growing phenomenon that could fill a crucial gap as baby boomers age and longevity increases. By 2050, demographers project that 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older, part of a "silver tsunami."

"I think this is going to be the way of the future," said Berdeen Coven, a psychologist leading the drive to launch the Silicon Valley Village, expected to open by June. "There just aren't going to be enough private facilities for people to age in, and we have to get together and help each other out as we live longer."

The article provides financial information for the nascent Silicon Valley Village:

Coven, with the Silicon Valley Village, said about 20 volunteers are working to launch it once they secure enough start-up funding, expected mostly from individuals.

"Our goal is $100,000 so we won't ever have to close our doors," Coven said.

The village will charge $800 annually per person, or $950 per household. It will start small, serving Los Gatos, Saratoga, Monte Sereno and parts of Campbell, and add 100 members yearly until it's serving most of Santa Clara County.

The article also mentions that UC Berkeley's Center for Advanced Study of Aging Services, with the financial support of the Archstone Foundation, is conducting a three-year study of Ashby Village to determine the qualities most likely to support the long-term viability of such 'villages.'

The cost of well-designed aging

It seems like many of the best ideas out there for aging share a common element:  expense.  I think about them the way I do about the fantastic homes pictured in gorgeous shelter magazines like Architectural Digest:  Lovely, but completely unattainable.  So often, these innovative retirement communities, or continuing care communities that require an immense up-front deposit along with substantial monthly payments, seem like something accessible only to those families that have amassed wealth. 

Take, for example, the lovely Taunton Press book, The House to Ourselves.  Subtitled "Reinventing Home Once the Kids Are Grown," it chronicles in loving detail the design decisions made by twenty empty-nester couples and one group of empty-nester friends [Cheesecake, discussed in other posts within this blog]. Other than the Cheesecake group, and one couple who moves into a new university-sponsored retirement community and engages an architectural firm to make the unit they select less cookie-cutterish, all the exemplars, even if they are technically downsizing, involve either new construction or very significant rehab of existing dwellings.  

As with all Taunton Press books, including the Sarah Susanka Not So Big House books, this one is filled with lovely homes, all architect-designed, on incredible properties, and with gorgeous high quality materials and  and undoubtedly extremely expensive finish detailing.    It's dispiriting.  I guess that the most positive takeaway is to focus not on the incredibly costly shelter ideas depicted here, but upon the perhaps universal values underlying these baby-boomers' choices, as interpreted by the architects who translated their desires into reality:  single level living, an open floor plan, accessible design, space flexible enough to allow for visits from family or possibly eventually live-in help, and personalization of that space to permit hobby and craft rooms.

Three stages of old age

Lawrence Frolik is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an expert on housing options for the aging.  In a classic article laying out the parameters affecting housing needs of the aging, he points out that: 

Younger individuals often look upon retirement as a homogenous age period;  that is, everyone over the age of sixty-five is about the same.  This is inaccurate. Gerontologists like to classify old age into three periods:  the period from age sixty-five to seventy-five sometimes called the 'young old';  the period from age seventy-five to eighty-five sometimes called the 'old'; and the period post age eighty-five, sometimes referred to as the 'old old.' The division of old age into three periods highlights the reality that old age can conceivably extend for thirty years, from age sixty-five to ninety-five.  Over that potential thirty-year plus span, the wants and needs of the older individual will change.  More specifically, their housing needs will change.

Frolik notes that the needs of the 'young old', recently retired and for the most part in good health, tend to be controlled by their desires and interests -- hobbies, climate, travel, family -- rather than by physical concerns.    The next group, the 'old' who are seventy-five to eighty-five, are more influenced by health, safety and frailty issues.  The third group, the 'old old', are most likely to need assistance to live independently.  Interwoven with the variations in physical need of these three groups are the limitations imposed by dwindling disposable income, and the increasing need for community as spouses and friends pass away.

In the context of these three stages of aging, Frolik notes that, "As a result of ...[the] special needs of the very old, many who purchase a 'retirement' house when they are in their late sixties find that in their eighties they need to move again, this time into congregate housing or an assisted living facility."

Frolik has authored or edited a number of books, the most recent of which is listed in the "Interesting Reading" column on the right side of this blog. 

 

Cheesecake

In the late 1980s, eight long time friends  in their fifties and sixties decided to build a vacation retreat with the intention that they would ultimately retire there.  Some were singles and some were couples. Ultimately they were joined by four more people.  They purchased twenty acres in California's Mendocino County), hired a landscape architect and then an architect, and in 1993 were able to start to occupy the finished compound, which they named Cheesecake.

The three-building compound houses seven apartments, a communal living space, a laundry room, a library, and a workshop/craft room.  There are also porches and lofts to accommodate visiting children and grandchildren.  While accessible design was a consideration, and provision was made for future ramps and wheelchairs should they be needed, the property was not designed for continuing care of seriously ill members.   To ensure members' ongoing control of the community, Cheesecake was organized as a general partnership, so that an individual who wanted to sell or pass on his or her share could only sell it back to the partnership.  

Cheesecake's story is detailed in this 1994 New York Times article, and updated in this 2005 story in the East Bay Monthly.   There is additional information, as well as eight pages of photographs and architectural information, in a 2004 Taunton Press book, The House to Ourselves, by Todd Lawson and Tom Connor.

Janet Witkin, visionary founder of Alternative Living for the Aging

Here is the LA Times obituary of this impressive woman who died this weekend, far too young.

Accessible if not affordable design in the Rocky Mountains

Today's New York Times has an article  about the Colorado showpiece home of Cynthia Leibrock, a self-promoting expert on accessible design for aging in place.  'Accessible' here clearly refers to usability by the disabled, rather than to affordability, as the list of high end products Ms. Leibrock has incorporated into her 'universal design' home attests.  The story states that Kohler and Gaggenau (for both of whom Ms. Leibrock has consulted) have each donated about $50,000 in products to her home, and that about ten other manufacturers have also contributed items.  

Slow process of community design

Here's a window into some of the steps involved in developing a cohousing community.  It comes in an update from New Earth Song Cohousing LLC   (Bethell, Washington) in the Intentional Communities Directory that lists the milestones the group has achieved in their quest to build a community:

MILESTONES ACHIEVED

1: Membership process defined - to help new families understand our vision/plan

2: Development legal structure (LLC) registered with WA state

3: Startup funds raised, more is committed

4: Half acre w/3BD house bought by subgroup as probable site of initial development

5: Experienced Project Manager hired

6: Feasibility study prepared for initial offer made on 4.8 acre parcel

7: Offers made on that and another 1.3 acre parcel

8: 10-week Aging in Place study group completed with 6 Songaia families

9: Resale of Songaia unit to New Earth Song family

10: Site plan for surrounding 28.7 acres being developed

COSTS: LLC members have committed several thousand dollars during the formation. Future costs depend on which specific properties can be puchased and development options.

 

Lasell Village in MA

Lasell Village  is an independent living community that is affiliated with Lasell College, a small liberal arts school in Newton, Massachusetts.  Although the community offers continuing care, the focus here is on lifelong learning and intellectual enrichment, rather than physical diminution.  Lasell Village is located on the college's campus, and residents must commit to taking 450 college class hours per year.  The give and take between elderly and traditional students provides value to both populations.

 Here  is an article about Lasell Village written by one of its residents who also has a professional background in senior housing (and, interestingly, is the mother of Obama senior adviser David Axelrod).

What is a NORC?

NORC is an acronym for a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community -- that is, a community with a large proportion of older people, all living within a defined geographic area.  Unlike traditional retirement communities created specifically as destinations for retirees who make an active decision to join the community, NORCs come about by default with the aging of a population that has lived in a neighborhood for decades. A NORC is defined as including not only housing complexes and free standing homes, but also the associated commercial, community, worship, transportation and health resources that the community relies upon.   (Source:  2004 U.S. HHS report "Supportive Services Programs in Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities.")   

The identification of NORCs as distinct service targets began withJewish social service organizations in several urban areas.  In the mid-1980s UJA Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York began targeting health and social services to clients who were living in market rate apartment buildings in New York City where older adults were the predominant residents. These buildings became known as Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs).  Through this effort a new paradigm of community-based social services was derived:  the NORC-Supportive Services Program (NORC-SSP).  The model promotes healthy aging, independence and community building through a multifaceted approach. The key elements consist of case management and social work services; transportation; health care management and prevention programs; education, socialization, and recreational activities; and volunteer opportunities for program paricipants and the community.   (Drawn from the website of the NORC Aging in Place Initiative.)

Lesbian NORCs

The New York Times has a story today about another naturally occurring retirement community (NORC):  lesbians aging in communities they formed several decades ago, at a time when the general population was much less welcoming to gays than it is today. Some of these communities now include the (gay) children of original members.  I was struck, however, by the fact that the communities do not permit straight family members to live there as well.  Is such a dogmatic approach necessary?  I guess it's no different than over-55 communities that do not permit younger family members to come live with the residents.

Sampling the wares

Some senior living communities offer potential residents an opportunity to come try the place out for a couple of months, paying the monthly rate without having to make a larger commitment immediately. Snowbirds who want to get away from freezing temperatures for the winter can make an annual tradition out of this:  If they play their cards right, and their health holds up,  they could have a multi-year gig trying out different facilities each winter.