‘We Need Each Other’: Seniors Are Drawn to New Housing Arrangements

[longknife]

Older Americans are exploring housing alternatives, including villages and home-sharing.

And they’re not talking about the typical retirement home.

A primer: Shared housing matches people who have unused space with people who need housing; typically, at least one party is age 60 or older. Sometimes the arrangement involves simply rent and companionship, but sharers can also agree on lower rent in exchange for grocery shopping, dog walking, driving or other services.

Another way is Cohousing - A like-minded community forms, then looks into acquiring land and building a housing complex (or occasionally, converting a building) where members can live together.

Though their homes are smallish, residents also share a common house for communal meals, classes and meetings, plus gardens and outdoor walkways designed to encourage socializing.

The village movement, comprises 280 organizations in towns, cities, neighborhoods and even apartment complexes, and is growing by 20 percent a year, said Barbara Hughes Sullivan, national director of the Village to Village Network.

A lot more on all of it @ ‘We Need Each Other’: Seniors Are Drawn to New Housing Arrangements

 

[Tijn Von Ingersleben]

This is a good thing. My mother worked in a number of large retirement facilities while I was growing up. They were nothing more than death houses where children stored their parents until their deaths.
They creeped me out as a child...the smell...the loneliness was palpable.

 

[Correll]

Older Americans are exploring housing alternatives, including villages and home-sharing.

And they’re not talking about the typical retirement home.

A primer: Shared housing matches people who have unused space with people who need housing; typically, at least one party is age 60 or older. Sometimes the arrangement involves simply rent and companionship, but sharers can also agree on lower rent in exchange for grocery shopping, dog walking, driving or other services.

Another way is Cohousing - A like-minded community forms, then looks into acquiring land and building a housing complex (or occasionally, converting a building) where members can live together.

Though their homes are smallish, residents also share a common house for communal meals, classes and meetings, plus gardens and outdoor walkways designed to encourage socializing.

The village movement, comprises 280 organizations in towns, cities, neighborhoods and even apartment complexes, and is growing by 20 percent a year, said Barbara Hughes Sullivan, national director of the Village to Village Network.

A lot more on all of it @ ‘We Need Each Other’: Seniors Are Drawn to New Housing Arrangements

An excellent idea, depending on how it is done.


Quite often, independence is lost, due to one or two tasks becoming impossible. If there is someone to help with that one task, it could means years more of higher quality life.

 

[aaronleland]

When my grandmother got old we put her in a coffin. She died two days later.