« Previous Next »

Lowering the Average Age of Entry into Service-Enriched Housing

Posted by kmancer on April 23rd, 2010

As mentioned in one of my recent posts, I’ve just spent a considerable amount of time in Alberta. At one of the retirement communities in Calgary (retirement community Alberta-style, meaning quite a lot of personal care services are delivered on site), the average age of entry is currently 87! They recently had a 98 year old move in! Forgive the excessive use of exclamation marks but in light of one of the industry’s holy grails—reducing the average age of entry into service-enriched housing—these are discouraging trends. Part of this phenomenon is undoubtedly due to the recession.  Our industry is less need-driven than we thought, at least it is when house prices and the value of investment portfolios fall at the same time.  But what will happen when the recession, or more importantly, people’s memories of the recession, end? Will we have a flock of 80 year olds clamouring to move in?

Maybe not. I used to think we really could reduce the average age of entry by focusing on fitness and wellness, including full kitchens and washer/dryers in units, doing away with assigned seating and defined meal times, letting people choose whether they wanted to eat one, two, or three meals in the dining room or the bistro, running a full slate of educational events on-site and off-site, hiring concierges…the list goes on.

Now I am not so sure but stay tuned! It is a subject we will often return to in coming posts.

Tags: , , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Future, Senior Housing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.