Posts Tagged ‘Housing Development’
Monday, July 26th, 2010
I have posted a couple of times about my forthcoming book currently titled The Future of Seniors Housing: Planning, Building, and Operating Successful Seniors Housing Projects. The original goal was to publish mid-year but now it’s looking more like fall. However great progress has been made over the last few months and I am feeling much less anxious than I have for a long time. There are now seven chapters in the book plus the introduction.
I have said many times that the book has practically killed me and that if I had known yada yada yada. I don’t know if that is entirely true though. I might have written it even if I had fully realized how much work it would be. Because, as all of you who read this blog know, seniors housing is an endlessly fascinating field. It is such a cliché to describe things as labours of love, but that’s how things get to be clichés in the first place—because they are true!
So, coming soon!
Tags: Aging, Housing Development, Housing Market, Retirement, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing, Supportive housing
Posted in News, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing | No Comments »
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
The furor over the 2011 Census reminds me of Sarah Palin claiming she understood international relations because she could see Russia from her front door. That is how all of us will have to operate in the future—without benefit of actual facts guiding our decisions.
I have noted in past posts how we rely on data from the long form to analyze seniors’ housing markets, including data on income and housing. I haven’t noted though how often we rely on mobility data to understand demographic patterns affecting markets and communities. Data from the long form tells us how many people of various age groups lived at the same address five years earlier, how many lived in another community in the same province, and how many lived in another province.
Well that is just downright intrusive, Tony Clement and Stephen Harper would no doubt say. But of course it isn’t intrusive and the data helps us to avoid mistakes. In my forthcoming book I mention the case of a former client of ours who was planning to build a big seniors’ housing project in the interior of British Columba. He was sure that people from all over Canada would flock to the community, partly because his site was in BC, an assumed magnet for seniors, and partly because it was a good site, right behind the Tim Horton’s. We were able to show him, based on long form data, that his assumption was mistaken and that the prospects for his site were not good.
Normally it is a delicate matter to tell someone that their plan isn’t a sound one but this client was far from perturbed. “You have saved me millions of dollars”, he said, and that is true.
The lack of long form data in so many areas of the Canadian economy and Canadian society is going to be an extremely costly, as well as a futile, exercise.
Tags: 2011 Census, Developers, Household Income, Housing Development, Housing Market, Market Study, Migration, Mobility, Sarah Palin, Seniors' Housing, Stephen Harper
Posted in Future, Marketing, 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 »
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
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Thursday, May 20th, 2010
Since one of Lumina’s business lines is market studies, it may sound self-serving for me to say that it is false economy of the worst kind to launch a real estate development project of any kind without doing a market study first. But very often, developers have great difficulty grasping the fundamental truth of this observation, partly because of personality. Lack of confidence is not a trait shared by many developers but it is easy to tip over the line from confidence to hubris. Even granting a solid understanding of a market on the part of a developer, a third party study is invaluable in terms of reducing risk and maximizing profitability. Lenders know this, which is why they are usually more likely to require a market study than a developer.
To make the matter more complicated, there are numerous ways for market studies to go off the rails, many of them not especially obvious to casual or uninformed observers, OR, it must be said, to unethical market analysts who write “market studies to order”. Firms like this certainly exist and in most cases, knowledgeable industry participants know exactly who these companies are.
In future posts (interrupted by posts from Phoenix, where I am headed to the ALFA conference on Sunday) I will address some of the ways market studies can go off the rails and what you should watch for. This is assuming of course, that you are interested in a market study that tells you the truth.
Tags: ALFA, Developers, Housing Development, Housing Options, Market Study, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing
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Thursday, May 13th, 2010
I am heading off to Phoenix a week Sunday for the annual Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) conference. The last ALFA conference I went to was in San Diego in 2006. Since then I attended National Association of Homebuilder 55+ Housing Council conferences in Denver (2007) and New Orleans (2008). The NAHB conferences were focused exclusively on active adult housing for years but both Denver and New Orleans added a service-enriched stream. That was dropped in 2009. The whole conference was dropped in 2010, presumably because things are so bad in the US seniors’ housing industry, at least from the perspective of the NAHB. So it’s back to ALFA.
I will be posting regularly from the conference itself. In addition I am touring three projects and will post about those as well.
Tags: ALFA, Assisted Living, Conference, Housing Development, Housing Options, NAHB, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing
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Thursday, April 29th, 2010
If I start getting boring on this subject please let me know! I had lunch with my 85 year old mystery shopper, Edna, today. Edna is well-suited to mystery shopping—she worked on the Enigma project in London during the Second World War. In an interesting twist, so did her father but because of the enormous secrecy shrouding the Enigma project, neither one of them knew about the other’s work until years later.
Edna lives independently and is in great health, although she had a scare a few months ago. Often we in the industry like to say that a scare is just the thing to drive people into the arms of the supportive housing industry, but not Edna! She’s got a pacemaker now and feels better than she has in years.
I asked her if she would consider moving into a project like the one we were touring if she had buckets of money but she said no. She said she was not interested in giving up anything she has now to move to “God’s waiting room”. By the way Edna highly recommends a British TV show of the same name.
That’s the problem in a nutshell—people don’t think of retirement housing as a wonderful carefree way to spend their golden years; they think of it as the last stop before death.
Can we change this view, even a little? Here’s Edna’s suggestion for an appealing tag line: “Have the freedom to do whatever you like. Join us for an endless series of adventures.” That sounds good doesn’t it?
Tags: Age of entry, Aging, Assisted Living, Housing Development, Housing Options, Retirement, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing, Supportive housing
Posted in Future, Marketing, Senior Housing | Comments Off
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