Posts Tagged ‘Aging in place’
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
Historically, market areas in the seniors’ housing industry in Canada have been defined for the service enriched segment of the market. Primary market areas (PMAs) are considered to be those areas from which 75-80% of the residents of a project will come. Sometimes radiuses are used, 10 miles being a popular one as in “This is a 10 mile business”. Occasionally the 10 mile rule even works but it is a risky thing to hang your financing on. Bridges, municipal boundaries, socio-economic neighborhood characteristics, competing projects—any of these, plus dozens of other factors, can and do affect the determination of primary and secondary market areas.
And of course there is the big one, the location of children. From the perspective of market analysis it would be comforting to think that the location of children is a neutral factor when it comes to estimating demand from primary and secondary market areas because it is a difficult factor to estimate. But it is far from neutral. It may even be as important as the presence of seniors themselves in a market area. Job-generating market areas will attract more seniors than they lose, which is why Alberta attracts and retains more people over the age of 65 than BC (strange but true).
As is almost always the case in Canada, there is very little hard data indicating whether the definition of primary market areas has any basis in fact at all, beyond the research Lumina has done with the BC Senior Living Association. Operators know where their residents come from of course but there has been no systematic collection and analysis of data that shows how reliable the 75-80% estimate really is.
But things are different in the US, where the industry sees the value of research and actually spends money on it! Wow – what a concept. The most recent NIC Insider Newsletter references a 2003 study that found that 22.5% of a large sample of new residents moving to CCRCs (Continuing Care Retirement Communities) had moved from farther than 15 miles away. Results of this study have been supported, in a way, by a just-published Reuters/University of Michigan survey. Of respondents to that survey aged 70+, 20.4% said that where they live was not convenient from the perspective of where their children live. NIC sees this as supporting the results of the 2003 survey and I suppose in a very indirect way it does.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Housing Development, Housing Market, Market Study, Retirement, Seniors' Housing
Posted in Housing Market, Market Studies, Seniors' Housing | Comments Off
Monday, June 6th, 2011
A recent article in the Economist (An age-old problem, May 28th, 2011) discusses the findings of a report from the Law Commission, an agency in Britain that helps Parliament “tidy up legislation”, in the inimitable words of the Economist. The report is focused on long term care and how to pay for it. At present, poor people have their care paid for by the state; wealthier people have to pay for it themselves, either by running down their savings or selling their home or both. This is a much different situation from Canada, where almost all long term care is paid for by the state. (Rich people pay a little more than poor people for subsidized care, but not much more. How long this can last is another question entirely.)
The Law Commission considered the fairness of the situation in Britain—should people who have worked hard all their lives, saved their money and bought property be faced with financial ruin if they require long term care? The Economist expects that further work by the Commission will recommend an insurance scheme of some sort, probably underwritten by the state, to help deal with these problems. Almost no one in Britain buys long term care insurance but as loyal readers of this blog will know, almost no one in any other country does either.
Another solution for aging Britons, suggested by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, involves a home equity scheme. People would sell a stake in their houses, which would be reclaimed after death. The money so raised would be used to pay for home modifications designed to facilitate aging in place—showers instead of bathtubs and so on. A pilot project in North London has experienced only modest take-up so far but that is partly because a similar scheme in the 1980s did not work well and people remember.
Something is going to have to work, in Canada as well as in Britain. State-funded long term care is most definitely a time-limited solution to emerging needs.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Baby Boomers, Housing Options, long term care, Seniors, Seniors' Housing
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Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Emmylou Harris has just released a new record which, by all accounts, is excellent. Reading the reviews I learned that Emmylou, who is 64, lives with her mother, who is 89, just outside Nashville. That got me thinking, yet again, about the future housing behaviour of the boomers. Coincidentally we have been cleaning out files and found a 2005 article from Australia written by Val O’Toole called Baby Boomers Housing Demands. The article references psychologist Erik Erikson, who theorized that when people are enmeshed in one stage of life it is very hard to foresee the next. That is certainly true of the boomers—it is probably true of everyone. When you are, say, 60 and fit, how can you possibly foresee what you might want when you are 85 and frail? People are always saying the boomers will be different when they are 85 but I am not so sure. It’s one reason I am looking forward to actually being 85—finding out how the story ends.
The Australian article speculates about all the possibilities and concludes that typical older boomers, like Emmylou Harris and her mum will choose to remain in the family home no matter how inappropriate it may be. That certainly mirrors the situation in North America as well.
But that is partly a matter of options, or lack of options. Today there isn’t much choice for mobile seniors beyond active adult type housing and service-enriched type housing. There are a few cohousing communities around, but very few other examples of more communal type living arrangements. That is one area I think is going to be a much more prominent part of the landscape in future years.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Baby Boomers, Housing Market, Housing Options, Independent Living, Retirement, Seniors, Seniors' Housing
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Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
Insights and Innovation: The State of Seniors Housing analyzes data from the 92 projects submitted to the Design for Aging Review (DFAR) in 2010. The report is a collaboration between the American Institute of Architects and Perkins Eastman Architects.
One of the insights of the report is that the traditional distinction between independent living and assisted living is becoming increasingly blurred “as a greater number of communities offer independent living plus services” as opposed to independent living as well as assisted living. For example, one of the winners was Sun City Palace Tsukaguchi in Osaka, a 760 unit CCRC that offers independent living with services as well as a skilled nursing facility, but no assisted living component. The continuum at this community is provided through increasingly supportive in-home care, rather than through transition to a designated assisted living environment. Another winner was the Villa at San Luis Rey, which has licensed all its units as assisted living but markets them as independent living with services. Blurry indeed!
The report explores many other fascinating issues and is available on-line at www.aia.org.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Assisted Living, Independent Living, Retirement, Seniors' Housing, Supportive housing
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Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
Before I get into this, I wanted to let you know that my book The Future of Seniors Housing: Planning, Building and Operating Successful Seniors Housing Projects is now available on Amazon.ca and on eBay. I know it sounds kind of weird to think about listing new books on eBay but apparently it is quite common. Eventually we will have an ebook too and I will let you know when it is available.
In the meantime, Senior Housing News (www.seniorhousingnews.com) has released its Top 10 trends for the coming year. The # 1 trend is price increases in seniors housing due to supply constraints (ie no new supply for several years), demographics, and higher labour and material costs. That seems a bit unlikely to me. Occupancy levels in IL/AL communities in the US are still below 90% and the conventional housing market has not really recovered.
Rents in Canada ARE going up though, at least in a number of communities. Others are having interesting sales events—for example, in Victoria, Holiday is offering free rent for life to one lucky winner per month until March 31st. In Calgary, Holiday is offering $95 rent for the first month and a five year rent freeze. Holiday markets to the IL market more than most operators in Calgary and has very likely been harder hit by the recession as a result.
The # 2 trend identified by Senior Housing News is renovating people’s own homes to make them more age-friendly. They base that conclusion on a report recently released by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The report points to a growing renovation industry In the next five years, partly because of growth in the number of households moving into the 55–64 and 65+ age ranges— when homeowners typically prepare their homes for their retirement years by making aging-in-place retrofits. The Joint Centre expects that market to be particularly strong. That’s interesting because in the past, seniors have spent very little money on adapting their homes to accommodate aging in place. I will come back to this in a later post.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Assisted Living, Housing Development, Housing Market, Housing Options, Independent Living, Retirement, Seniors, Seniors' Housing
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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
In the last few days this question has come to my attention three times. The first involved the release of a report by the Met Life Mature Market Institute called Aging in Place 2.0 (AiP 2.0). For all the non-geeks and people over 50 reading this blog, the designation 2.0, as I understand it, means something like a second generation revolution. The term usually refers to the internet, as in Web 2.0. Web 2.0 means that because of interactivity and social media, the internet is a totally different place from what it used to be. If the term hadn’t fallen into severe disfavour, we could say that defining anything as 2.0 means a new paradigm has been created.
Hence Aging in Place 2.0. Ironically, the whole report is focused on caring for people the way we used to—ie, at home. What qualifies the report for the 2.0 designation is the fact that it suggests the development of a whole new infrastructure to support people aging at home that goes way way beyond Meals on Wheels. The main pillars of AiP 2.0 are technology (for health care and monitoring), community resources (so people don’t get isolated in their own homes), transportation and community infrastructure (better designed communities in the long term, organizational approaches in the meantime), and houses that accommodate aging in place (universal design in the long term, modifications in the meantime).
The second reference to home care arose from the 23d annual national summit of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving (RCI). RCI has proposed the creation of a National Caregiving Initiative that would provide support for the millions of Americans who provide support for family members living at home.
And the third reference was in today’s Globe and Mail. An article by Rod Mickleburgh focuses on two BC doctors who provide care for aging patients in their homes. One of them, John Sloan, has written a very good book called A Bitter Pill: How the Medical System is Failing the Elderly. Here’s what he has to say:
Treating frail seniors in their homes is not only good for them, it reduces their hospital trips and medication needs as well as postponing admission to long-term care – all major drivers of health-care costs.
“It’s a lovely, win-win situation,” says John Sloan, the now-retired physician who pioneered the concept in Vancouver. “As you provide better care for these people, the price of it goes down. If we do this the right way, we may just rescue the health-care system. It’s the future. It has to be.”
Something to think about.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Home care, Seniors' Housing
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Friday, October 8th, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I toured the new Tapestry at UBC project, which just opened. Like its sister project, Tapestry O’Keefe, the UBC project offers both rental units and condo units. One of the things that struck me about the dining room was the open kitchen, which is sort of like an Earl’s. I wondered whether seniors might like that idea, or not. It’s unusual in upscale communities, although there may be a grill area adjacent to the dining room where special events occur. The Dunfield in Toronto offers this feature—there’s a grill-to-order event every Friday night. Some less upscale communities have open kitchens, but these are somewhat more reminiscent of hockey arenas than an Earl’s Restaurant.
So I was happy to tour the Belletini in Seattle last week, not exactly a sister to the Tapestry projects but definitely related by virtue of management by Leisure Care. The Belletini too has an open kitchen and according to both the Chef and the Marketing Manager, the residents love it! They love to interact with the chefs, they love to see the food being cooked, they like the general liveliness created by all that activity. There is a counter facing the kitchen that has six quite high stools for eating and watching. Apparently these stools are occupied the minute the kitchen opens at 5, notwithstanding the fact that when I say the stools are tall, I mean they are tall! The Chef told me that if people need help climbing up on them, they help them—no big deal.
So there you go. Never hold a preconceived notion. More on the Belletini and another Seattle-area project in forthcoming posts.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Appliances, British Columbia, Housing Development, Housing Market, Housing Options, Marketing, Retirement, Seniors' Housing, Universal design
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Thursday, September 9th, 2010
In the United States, where they have a quaint habit of collecting reliable data that sheds light on matters of interest and importance to their society (unlike Canada, where we consider this practice outrageously intrusive), data from the 2009 American Housing Survey have just been released.
For the 65+ group, the most common reason for moving was to be closer to work/school/other. The questions (and answers) apply to all age groups, which is why “closer to family” doesn’t appear as a specific choice. It is very likely though that closer to family is the primary motivator for this group.
No surprise there. But the second most common reason, chosen by almost as many people as “closer to work/school/other” was “needed larger house or apartment”. Now that IS surprising.
On the unsurprising front again, only 7% of 55+ households reported living in an age-restricted community. Of course we have no idea what the comparable Canadian figure is, but it is probably lower for reasons I have discussed in earlier posts.
90% of US households of all ages live in unsecured (ie ungated) communities, but new construction is more likely to be in gated communities.
We will post again about the AHS.
Tags: 2011 Canadian Census, Age of entry, Aging, Aging in place, American Housing Survey, gated communities, Housing Development, Housing Market, Housing Options, Migration, Mobility, Seniors' Housing, snow birds
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Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
I was working on something to do with life lease the other day and googled an article by an Ontario lawyer named John Clark. The article is called Life Lease Residential Housing: Is it Time for Legislation? So far Manitoba is the only province that has enacted legislation dealing with life leases, although other provinces have thought about it and two (BC and Ontario) have had a public consultation processes. Nothing happened in either province as a result of the consultation and it seems unlikely that anything will, at least for the foreseeable future.
The conclusion of the Clark article is that yes, legislation would be a good thing, notwithstanding the concern of many in the industry that legislation might be too restrictive—might harm the innovative and flexible approach to life leases that is now the operational context. And in fact I have talked to knowledgeable people in Manitoba who say that that is exactly what happened in that province—innovation and creativity were stifled as a result of the legislation.
Mr. Clark supports legislation for the consumer protection elements it would presumably provide, specifically in relation to the safety of purchaser deposits, financial and management disclosure, construction insurance, the freedom to register a life lease interest at land titles, and the freedom to sublet.
In BC, these consumer protection mechanisms already exist, not through specific life lease legislation but through the Real Estate Development Marketing Act.
Mr. Clark also muses that perhaps life lease development ought to be restricted to the not-for-profit sector and that governments might want to think about assisting the life lease development process in some way—via loan guarantees and incentives for developers and residents for example—because that would be a relatively inexpensive way for governments to contribute to the development of affordable housing.
In all provinces, except Alberta, life lease has evolved as a creature of the not-for-profit sector. There are very few for-profit life leases, mostly because for-profit developers prefer to get in and out as fast as possible. For-profit life leases operate primarily in the service-enriched market.
We will be posting more about life leases in the weeks to come. It is a particular passion of Lumina’s.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Housing Development, Housing Market, Housing Options, Life Lease, Retirement, Seniors' Housing
Posted in Future, Life Lease, Seniors' Housing | Comments Off
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