Cooperative Aging

Alternative living for the aging

    Alternative Living for the Aging (ALA) is a Los Angeles non-profit that runs two interesting programs that, according to its website, "allow older people to remain independent through their interdependence."

    ALA's Cooperative Apartment Communities program places seniors in affordable collective housing in one of five different Los Angeles-area rental apartment complexes run by ALA. The communities have different structures  -- in one, residents come together regularly for meals cooked by the community's cook;  in another the residents live completely independently --but they share an ethos that has residents relating to one another as an extended family or community. 

    The second of ALA's programs, the Preinterviewed Housemate Matching Program, matches seniors with potential housemates(senior or younger) who either pay them rent or assist them with services such as shopping, transportation or companionship.

Aging in place

"Aging in place" is the term describing a movement to enable elderly people to stay at home, rather than move to assisted living facilities, when they grow frail.    Banding together in neighborhood economic communities, elderly people -- or those who will one day be elderly -- plan and negotiate to obtain sharable services, such as transportation, home health visits, shopping, and home repair.   

Two recent New York Times articles featured groups of neighbors in Boston and Washington, D.C. who have joined together in non-profit organizations to obtain services and look after one another.  Similar efforts are under way around the country. 

The prototype aging-in-place community is the six-year-old Beacon Hill Village in the Boston area, which serves a group of members living around the Beacon Hill neighborhood.  Also in Boston is  Cambridge at Home,  a group of those in the Cambridge neighborhood, and the Stonewall Connections network, which works specifically to help gay and lesbian members age in place.

In Washington, D.C., a group of neighbors have recently organized Capitol Hill Village with the same intention.  And, in Connecticut, Staying Put in New Canaan  is another new network that enables retirees to stay independent for longer by connecting them through a "virtual village" .