The Senior Cohousing Handbook


Book Description

How to make your senior years healthy, safe, social, and stimulating. "Architect and author Chuck Durrett's recently released book Senior Cohousing Handbook comes at a time of high interest in greening, sustainable housing and affordable living concerns. Durrett's new book is a comprehensive guide for baby boomers wishing to continue vibrant, active lifestyles." - EPR Real Estate News "Make your senior years safe and socially fun with the idea of senior cohousing and a book on the topic that shows how seniors can custom-build their neighborhood to fit their needs. This is housing built by seniors, not for them, and emphasizes independence and social networking. Any library strong in gerontology or social science and many a general lending library needs this. - James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review "As a Baby Boomer, I've joked for a few years that we'll all end up living communally again because Social Security will be broke...This is one of the better ways to envision it."-- Sacramento Bee No matter how rich life is in youth and middle age, the elder years can bring on increasing isolation and loneliness as social connections lessen, especially if friends and family members move away. Senior cohousing fills a niche for this demographic—the healthy, educated, and proactive adults who want to live in a social and environmentally vibrant community. These seniors are already wanting to ward off the aging process, so they are unlikely to want to live in assisted housing. Senior cohousing revolves around custom-built neighborhoods organized by the seniors themselves in order to fit in with their real needs, wants, and aspirations for health, longevity, and quality of life. Senior Cohousing is a comprehensive guide to joining or creating a cohousing project, written by the US leader in the field. The author deals with all the psychological and logistical aspects of senior cohousing and addresses common concerns, fears, and misunderstandings. He emphasizes the many positive benefits of cohousing, including: Better physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health Friendships and accessible social contact Safety and security Affordability Shared resources Successful aging requires control of one’s life, and today's generation of seniors—the baby boomers—will find that this book holds a compelling vision for their future. Charles Durrett is a principal at McCamant & Durrett in Nevada City, California, a firm that specializes in affordable cohousing. He co-authored the groundbreaking Cohousing with his wife and business partner, Kathryn McCamant.




Senior Living Communities


Book Description

The demand for residential communities for seniors rises as the U.S. population continues to age. This growth means that new administrators and staff members often are learning by trial and error the complicated task of delivering high-quality and consistent services to elderly persons. While many new facilities have been successful, others have been plagued by a variety of administrative and financial difficulties. Senior Living Communities remains the definitive guide to managing these facilities. In this thoroughly updated and revised edition, Benjamin W. Pearce offers a wealth of sound advice and practical solutions. He discusses resident relations, operating methods, staffing ratios, department management, cost containment, sales and marketing strategies, techniques of financial analysis, budgeting, and human resources. New chapters address issues particular to dementia care and architecture, and the appendix contains a department-by-department audit of senior living operations. From the front lines to the boardroom, this book should be a part of every decision-making process for improving and maintaining assisted living, congregate, and continuing care retirement communities.




Elderly Housing Options


Book Description







Senior Cohousing


Book Description

This book presents a concise description and qualitative exploration of a new residential option for older adults: senior cohousing. It describes the practical, structural and communal aspects of senior cohousing and shares the lived experiences of actual residents. Pursuing an existential-phenomenological approach, the authors visited a selection of senior cohousing communities throughout the US and interviewed members to investigate their experiences in several regards: gathering together; developing the mission and architectural design; defining member expectations for the community; and engaging in cooperative self-management, consensus building, shared tasks and mutual activities as an ongoing way of life. In addition, the authors explored the benefits, challenges and surprises that community members have encountered along the way, and what these experiences have meant for their lives. Given its unique insights, the book offers a valuable resource for academics and all those working and interested in gerontology, sociology, psychology, nursing, public health, housing and the consumer sciences. It will also benefit active older adults who are considering new housing options.




Unassisted Living


Book Description

Unassisted Living documents the shift away from the senior housing that promoted disengagement toward architecture and design that promote active aging. The book is organized in six sections, corresponding to the concerns and special interests of Boomers—those who intend to remain in an urban setting, those concerned with sustainability, those with complex families and non-traditional households, and those who seek a community based on spirituality or shared interests. Boomers are perhaps the largest generational cohort the United States has ever seen. Numbering some 78 million people born between 1946 and 1964, Boomers are not accepting traditional retirement or “senior housing” and are instead determined to remain active and engaged professionally and socially.




Your Senior Housing Options


Book Description

As we age, it's never easy to face the prospect of what to do when we need living assistance. But the reality is that two-thirds of today's seniors will eventually need long-term care, with 20 percent needing it for longer than five years. If you are a retirement-age baby boomer or senior, don't wait for a health crisis to occur. You owe it to yourself-and your family-to plan for the future today. Although we've all heard horror stories, great facilities where residents are treated like gold are out there. How do you find them? You have to do your homework, ask the right questions, and look beyond the superficial to find what's right for you. With experience as both an industry expert and a loving daughter, Diane Twohy Masson is passionate about helping seniors find the retirement community that fits their price range, lifestyle, and needs. This guidebook offers a proactive approach to navigating the complex maze of senior housing options. It will help you understand the costs and consequences of the various possibilities including home care, independent living, assisted living, group homes, memory care, and skilled nursing care facilities.




Gilbert Guide To Senior Housing


Book Description

Finding the best place to live in the golden years of life 2008 was a landmark year, as over 79 million people became eligible for Social Security benefits. More and more senior citizens and their children will need to make decisions about where they will live the remainder of their lives and most will seek to downsize and seek out age-appropriate communities. Gilbert Guide, America's premier source of information for senior care and housing needs, provides helpful and comprehensive information about: *How to evaluate housing needs *Each available housing option, including services, contacts, and financing *Subsidized housing *Moving and settling in *How to get the best services *Government agencies and other resources




Insider's Guide to Investing in Senior Housing


Book Description

The Insider's Guide to Investing in Senior Housing, "America's Best Financial Opportunity for the Next 25 Years!" is the definitive handbook for those wanting to discover how who to best capitalize on the the massive demographic shift called the "Silver Tsunami".Written by seasoned business/investment experts, brothers Gene and Jim Guarino share how to participate as an active or passive investor in the exciting new real estate investment opportunity of senior housing.




Disrupting the Status Quo of Senior Living


Book Description

With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, the need for senior living is growing at a steep rate, and the aging services field has been hard at work preparing for these new customers. Current practices aim to bring the kind of comfort and amenities enjoyed at hotels and resorts to the settings we create for older adults to live in. But what if these efforts are misdirected? Interweaving research on aging, ideas from influential thinkers in the aging services field, and the author's own experiences managing and operating senior living communities, Disrupting the Status Quo of Senior Living: A Mindshift challenges readers to question long-accepted practices, examine their own biases, and work toward creating vibrant cultures of possibility and growth for elders. Shining a light on her own professional field, Jill Vitale-Aussem exposes the errors of current thinking and demonstrates how a shift in perspective can effect real cultural transformation. Her book delves into society's inherent biases about growing older--where ageism, paternalism, and ableism abound--and provokes readers to examine how a youth-obsessed culture unconsciously impacts even the most well-meaning senior living policies, practices, and organizations. Deconstructing the popular hospitality model, for example, Vitale-Aussem explains how it can actually undermine feelings of purpose and independence. In its place, she proposes better ways to create opportunities for older people to exercise choice, autonomy, and self-efficacy. Filled with empowering stories of elders who find purpose and belonging within their senior residences, Disrupting the Status Quo of Senior Living builds on AARP's disrupt aging work and demonstrates that to truly transform senior living, we must dig deeper and create communities that promote the potential and value of the people who live and work in these settings.