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Virtual Retirement Communities

Posted by kmancer on April 13th, 2010

First developed in the US nearly a decade ago, virtual retirement communities (VRCs) are non-profit organizations that provide their members with a wide variety of services ranging from personal care to social and cultural activities. In essence, they provide supportive housing and assisted living in people’s own homes. Membership fees are about $600 per year for individuals and $800 per year for couples. Many services provided by VRCs are free, including opportunities to socialize and recreate, but for those that aren’t free, VRCs are able negotiate bulk discounts for the services they organize. But even better than that, VRCs identify reputable and reliable providers of goods and services—their members have only to dial one number and their needs are met.

Because they provide an affordable alternative to facility-based supportive housing and assisted living, VRCs are bound to become a prominent part of the aging-in-place continuum, particularly as constrained government budgets require people to assume more responsibility for their own housing and health care.

Whenever I describe VRCs to people, they get very excited. We are currently working with two clients in British Columbia who are interested in establishing a virtual retirement community and interest in them is bound to grow.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Future, Senior Housing, Virtual Retirement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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