Posts Tagged ‘Aging in place’
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 | No Comments »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Conventional wisdom suggests that for supportive seniors’ housing projects (meals, housekeeping, laundry etc), walking-distance proximity to stores and services is, if not essential, then at the very least extremely important. But without sitting down and doing the math, I would say that a minority of supportive seniors’ housing projects in BC are located close enough to stores and services so that people could easily walk to them. Some are in locations that are downright pastoral. Of course walking isn’t necessary for all people—many have scooters that enlarge their geographic boundaries. Scooters though are used by a small minority of seniors, meaning that walking distance is more important than scooter distance.
As well, many seniors’ housing projects have their own buses to take people around to shopping and doctors’ appointments, many have small tuck shops that sell various items, and in any case, most meals are provided on site. So why do people need to walk anywhere? I firmly believe that the answer to that question is this: even if people don’t have to walk anywhere, the fact that they could if they wanted to is an important psychological benefit. And for those people who actually do walk to the store or the bank, it’s more than just a psychological benefit—it’s a physical benefit as well.
Proximity to green space seems to be less important than proximity to stores and services. It’s always nice to have a park to walk through but half the time the weather may preclude the walk. But proximity to schools and other places where children play is almost always considered a decided advantage because it gives people something highly enjoyable to watch. Proximity to seniors’ centres is hugely advantageous, not just because it allows residents to participate in outside events and activities, but because it facilitates two-way interaction. It’s easy to invite people living in the community and using the seniors’ centre to come for meals and events at the housing project, which is one of the very best ways of keeping buildings full. Easy access to public transportation falls into the “it goes without saying” category, whether or not people living in supportive housing projects ever actually take a city bus. Visitors might though and staff almost certainly will.
Of course finding sites that are close to stores, services, schools, public transit, and seniors’ centres is much easier said than done. When “affordably priced” is added to the list, finding a suitable site begins to verge on the miraculous, especially in centres where land is expensive.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Assisted Living, Developers, Housing Development, Housing Market, Housing Options, Independent Living, Mobility, Retirement, Seniors' Housing, Supportive housing
Posted in Seniors' Housing | No Comments »
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
Understanding disability rates and how they affect housing market behavior, in particular moves to supportive housing or assisted living, is a very difficult thing to do. Statistics Canada tells us that 43% of the 65+ population in Canada have some degree of disability, primarily mobility, agility, pain, or hearing. Of those with disabilities, 60% are mildly or moderately disabled, while 40% have severe or very severe disabilities. What “mild”, “moderate”, and “severe” mean is not easy to define. Statistics Canada uses a complicated rating system to categorize disabilities. At any rate, the question is how these disability rates affect housing market behavior.
To establish a context for his discussion, it’s useful to reflect on the fact that the huge majority of houses in Canada are neither “visitable” nor “accessible”, meaning they do not accommodate aging in place. So does this mean that when people become disabled in some way will they move to supportive housing? Maybe not all people, or even a majority of people, but some quantifiable proportion? Alas, no. We know that entrance into service-enriched housing such as supportive housing or assisted living is primarily need-driven, which means that people move into these types of environments not because they want to but because they have to. However that does not necessarily imply the presence of a disability—people may move because their spouse died and they are afraid to stay alone, or because they are isolated, or not eating properly, or because they have lost their driver’s license. And couples with disabilities are much less likely to move to supportive housing than individuals because they are able to help each other. If there were some way to quantify demand based on disability status we would have to adjust for the number of couples in a market area, which would further complicate an already suspect analysis.
As a result of all these confounding variables, in my view it is not possible to arrive at any conclusions at all about the demand for service-enriched housing in a community by applying national disability rates to the seniors’ population and assuming that some arbitrary proportion of that group will choose to move to service-enriched housing. Some market analysts do this I am sad to report. Be careful if you are working with one.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Assisted Living, Disability, Housing Market, Housing Options, Mobility, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing, Supportive housing, Universal design
Posted in Market Studies, Seniors' Housing | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
As we have often commented in this blog, the US is light years away from Canada in terms of the quantity and quality of available research on the seniors’ housing and health care industry. The mission of the wonderful National Investment Center (NIC) is: “To advance the quality of seniors housing and care by facilitating informed investment decisions through best-in-class data, research, networking events and professional education” and they do a great job of that.
One of the many useful things they do is track occupancy data by quarter for five categories of housing and health care—freestanding IL, combined IL, freestanding AL, combined AL, and CCRC. (Remember that AL in the US is almost exclusively private pay).
A recent NIC Newsflash points out that occupancy rates for all five categories have declined more or less continuously since the first quarter of 2007, when they reached a cyclical peak of 92.3% (on average). First quarter 2010 data indicates an average occupancy rate of 88.0%.
Assisted living performed best over the period (decline of 2.7%) and freestanding IL the worst (decline of 6.2%). CCRCs ended up in the middle with a decline of 4.1%.
This is not remotely surprising. The US housing market has been hammered over the last few years. People more able to postpone a move into service-enriched housing (i.e. potential IL residents) have done exactly that.
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Assisted Living, Housing Market, Housing Options, Independent Living, Occupancy Rates, Retirement, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing, snow birds, Supportive housing
Posted in Future, News, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing | Comments Off
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Many people (myself included) share the view that disability rates among the seniors’ population have been declining. For example, here’s a headline from a National Association of Aging document dated May, 2001: Dramatic Decline in Disability Continues for Older Americans. And what’s the evidence? Between 1994 and 1999, the percentage of Americans over the age of 65 with disabilities declined by 2.6% per year.
In answer to the obvious question: “why”?, the article suggests several possible reasons—improvements in maternal health early in the 20th Century; better control of infectious childhood diseases; behavioural changes such as declines in the incidence of smoking; better management of diseases such as hypertension; better drugs; and even increases in education levels.
But a recent article in Public Policy and Aging Report suggests that declines in disability rates are due not to medical science, but to “disability-friendly” environmental changes including curb cuts, disabled access ramps and elevators, and transportation services. Improvements in assistive devices (walkers, wheelchairs, scooters) have also enabled people with mobility impairments to get around better on their own.
The Public Policy and Aging Report article is focused mostly on physical impairments that impede a person’s ability to interact with the built and social environment but it also refers briefly to the positive impact of higher education levels on rates of cognitive impairment.
It is interesting to think about this. Disability is not defined as an impairment per se, but as a “social construct insofar as it reflects the ease or difficulty that individuals with physical impairments experience interacting with the built and social environment.”
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Disability, Mobility, Seniors, Universal design
Posted in Future, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing | Comments Off
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
I am in Phoenix at the ALFA conference. It takes a long time to get to Phoenix from Vancouver in spite of the fact that the two cities are in the same time zone (in the summer—Phoenix operates on standard time all year long). I spent part of the travel time reading Jim Moore’s latest book, Independent Living and CCRCs. Chapter 11 discusses high impact design features for independent living communities. Number one on the list is full-function kitchens, even in places serving three meals per day.
Yesterday I toured three life care communities in the area and I will be posting more about these three over the next few weeks, along with highlights from the conference itself. All three had full-function kitchens in their independent living units. My tour guides were shocked when I told them that full-function kitchens in Canadian independent living communities were rare. One of the three is upgrading its units—it is 20 years old—and the new fridges are the two door type with ice and water dispensers on one of the doors. The contrast with Danby bar fridges could hardly be starker. The upgraded stoves are full size with burners that are flush with the surface.
American operators include full-function kitchens more for the impression they create than for their actual utility. Consumers associate the lack of full kitchens with nursing homes and they don’t want to go there!
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, ALFA, Appliances, Assisted Living, Housing Development, Kitchens, Retirement, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing
Posted in Marketing, News, Senior Housing | Comments Off
Monday, May 10th, 2010
People don’t typically move to golf course communities in cold climates, although a recent edition of CARP magazine lists 27 active adult communities in Ontario, six of which feature golf courses. Canadians looking to avoid winter but still wanting to keep active might be more inclined to move to amenity-rich buildings. Some developers have taken dead aim at these consumers, incorporating pools, gyms, golf simulators, and personal trainers into their menu of services. On a more intellectual level, communities that offer links to universities or are built right on university campuses have become extremely popular in the US. There are more than 100 such communities, which offer reduced or free tuition, access to libraries and university events, and even opportunities for employment. Many of these communities operate on an entrance fee basis, similar to life lease housing.
Although a number of Canadian universities are adding residential components to their campuses, very few seniors’ communities have been developed—in fact, we have only been able to identify two, although a third is in the planning stages at Trent University in Guelph. (In an interesting reversal, several floors of a nearby seniors’ residence have been converted to student housing at the University of Winnipeg.) The first and largest is the Village by the Arboretum, on the campus of the University of Guelph. Home to over 1,000 seniors and active adults, the community consists of single detached houses, townhouses, apartment-style condominiums, an on-site medical centre, and social and recreational facilities. An assisted living component is planned. At the University of British Columbia, Concert Properties and Leisure Care are building a 180 unit seniors’ community that will include 134 rental units and 46 condominium units.
It seems rather curious that university-based seniors’ housing is such a rarity in Canada. The old 10-1 rule suggests that if there are 100 seniors’ housing communities on university and college campuses in the US there ought to be around 10 in Canada. It is also worthwhile considering that the university-based seniors’ communities in the US were developed in the pre-baby boomer era. What will happen when the boomers start retiring in large numbers? Will campus-based seniors’ housing explode?
Tags: Aging, Aging in place, Housing Options, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing, Trent University, UBC
Posted in Future, Senior Housing | Comments Off
Subscribe