Cooperative Aging

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.