And what are it's advantages?
Over the next two decades the United States senior population will jump dramatically. Seniors are expected to make up as much as 20% of the population nation wide with older citizens making up a fourth of the community in states like Florida, Arizona and East Texas that are fast becoming retirement meccas.
Aging and long term care specialist, Liz Taylor, says that “As baby boomers age, our communities will look very different.” As the first waves of boomers retire, we are already seeing a change in the senior “culture” and the expectations they bring with them to retirement.
"American is a young nation about to become old," Taylor warns. For the most part, America's housing industry has done a poor job of anticipating the gray-haired tsunami that is about to roll over them. In East Texas, builders remain stuck in their ways, producing stick frame housing the way they have always done it with little regard for the needs of an aging population.
Horror stories abound of couples who spend their life-savings to buy their dream retirement home on the lake and find themselves having to give them up just a few years later. Most builders have failed to design homes to accommodate the needs of aging homeowners. When age-related injury or disability strikes, homeowners find that doors aren't wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and,the entryways all have steps. Homeowners, already on fixed incomes have to spend money on ramps and bathroom rebuilds that require tens of thousands of dollars in renovation. Too often builder's don't allow room for a wheelchair, roll in showers or even adequate framing to support grab rails and lifts. There are seniors in East Texas who haven't seen parts of their own homes in years because they can't get into some rooms anymore.
Studies show that 90 percent of boomers retire with the expectation that they will age in their homes. Unfortunately, the very design of the homes they are buying and communities they are located in are not created to accommodate graceful aging in place. Subdivisions fail to include walks and curb cuts for pedestrians. Some gated senior communities here in Tyler, have streets that will not accommodate para-transit buses. Residents who lose the ability to drive and cannot afford chauffeurs, are either suddenly home bound or have to roll all the way to the front gate to meet the bus.
Apartment complexes that present themselves as “senior-friendly” often have only one or two supposedly accessible apartments. A recent survey by Freedom Way, a local disability housing initiative found that of 8500 apartments in Tyler, there were fewer than 20 that were fully accessible apartments according to the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Despite an ADA requirement that each complex have an accessible apartment available, most were found to be only partially accessible, some with only an extra wide front door and no bathroom accessible features..
To make matters worse, most of these apartments were rented to non-disabled individuals and not reserved for residents with disabilities, even though many of the complex's tenants were, in fact, coping with disabilities and had been on waiting lists for the accessible unit for years.
The city of Tyler is a driver's town. Few city streets offer sidewalks and curb cuts have yet to be fully implemented. The city has a public bus, but individuals in wheelchairs that live more than a block from the bus line must risk their lives on the public street with fast-moving cars in order to get from home to the bus stop. One retirement community is three blocks from a grocery store and shopping center, yet residents who attempt to walk, have to walk in the street up a blind hill on a road with a 35 mile an hour speed limit. I've seen old people in wheel chairs dodging from driveway to driveway till the batteries on their motorized chairs died, leaving them stranded alongside the road. I talked to seniors attending public forums over the years who told me they dreaded the day they became unable to drive because they would be trapped, unable to visit old friends any longer.
Co-housing like Honeysuckle Glen provides an answer to the challenges of aging in place. Honeysuckle Glen would be a small, intimate community of 10 to 40 cottages, owned by the residents and designed to allow for aging in place. Features will include:
- The community is resident-owned and governed. It's not assisted-living where a company owns the property and charges you rent and provides “services”. It's your community to run the way you and your neighbors want.
- The cottages are small, more energy efficient and fully accessible.
- Accessibility features do not have to be installed till needed, but the cottage's framing and floor space insure that any accommodations you need to add can be done quickly and inexpensively.
- Communal areas and guest rooms are available on the commons, shared by the neighborhood. This helps reduce the cost of maintaining space you use only intermittently.
- Neighbors share the cost of amenities and only add amenities they choose for themselves.
- Cottages face inward toward walking paths, park areas and the community center. Everyone has porches to sit on and safe places to walk their dogs.
- It's your house. If you want pets, nobody can tell you you can't have one.
- Repair costs can be shared as part of a homeowners fee or paid for individually as the community prefers. Services can be as minimal or comprehensive as the community chooses.
- Full access to homes in the community by home health workers, emergency services and other medical personnel is designed into the homes.
- Cottages can be larger or smaller and accommodate live-in family members or personal assistants.
- Homes are open and airy and the very architecture is designed to make coming outside into the fresh air inviting.
- The community setting will be the collective decision of the founding residents. It can be near town with easy access to transit, recreation, stores and churches or in a beautiful rural setting with shared access to a van or a pre-arranged link to rural transit. If you want your village on the lake, the neighbors can buy property on the lake. The community will be what the owners want it to be.
- Home design will feature energy efficient appliances, extra insulation and even solar panels if you want them installed. The small but airy cottage design means you aren't heating and cooling large unused spaces unnecessarily, but at the same time you aren't boxed in with tiny windows and closed-in spaces.
- Cottages can be connected to provide intergenerational spaces if, for instance, older children and parents choose to live together for mutual support or a grandchild moves in to help grandma out. The spaces are adaptable for a variety of family combinations.
Co-housing is a deliberately designed and constructed neighborhood, created by its residents to meet the special needs of aging baby boomers. Boomers, as we shall see, are predicted to be more inclined to tell developers and architects what they want in housing and less likely to simply accept what is available.
More next time about what Baby Boomers will likely want from their communities.
Tom King
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