Posts Tagged ‘Senior Housing’

My Book: A Few Steps Closer to Publication

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!

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2011 Census (Reprise)

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

As the government is still persisting in its wrong-headed plans to ruin the 2011 Census, I thought it would be useful to explain in a little more depth why the Census information is so critical for seniors’ housing analysis.

Here is an example of a table we always use when we are doing a market study or a community housing needs assessment.  Here are just a few of the things this table tells us:

  • 83% of the 55+ households in this community are homeowners.
  • The average income of the renters is $38,509 compared to $73,094 for the owners.
  • Single (non-family) renters over the age of 85 have the lowest average incomes.
  • Although not shown in the table, the detailed data indicate that there are 565 renter households aged 65+ in this community with an income lower than $14,999. These are the households facing serious challenges in terms of meeting their housing needs.

Owners

Renters

Family Hshlds

Non-Family

Family Hshlds

Non-Family

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

55-64

4,880

$101,729

1,030

$47,153

600

$61,629

510

$30,613

65-74

2,450

$67,633

815

$36,961

220

$41,969

405

$28,178

75-84

1,140

$63,158

1,030

$32,375

125

$35,366

265

$26,375

85+

200

$50,621

255

$24,358

60

$47,584

235

$24,220

Sadly, we will never have this level of knowledge about seniors’ housing markets in future years because all of this information comes from the long form.

For-profit and not-for-profit developers, communities, governments, market analysts—we will all be forced to guess what is going on. Tragic.

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Lowest and Highest Incomes in Canada for 65+ Households

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Note that this is the last time we will be able to discuss this issue, thanks to the Conservatives’ completely bone-headed and inexplicable decision to gut the 2011 Census. No other country in the world runs its Census the way Canada does, or will in 2011. It is a tragic mistake that will take years to correct. I have written to Tony Clement, the Minister who decided to gut the Census, Stephen Harper, my MP, the Globe and Mail, and all of my colleagues who rely on Census data to make sense of our world and I encourage you to do the same. I am surprised the outcry hasn’t been louder. It’s not just the seniors’ housing field that will be severely impacted of course. Please do what you can.

So for the last time for a long time, here are average incomes and rates of homeownership for 65+ households across the country. The lowest incomes are in Newfoundland and Labrador and the highest in Ontario. The proportion of homeowners is fairly similar throughout the country except for Quebec, which has a much higher incidence of renting across all age groups compared to other provinces. It’s interesting that Manitoba is the only other province with a homeownership ratio in the 60s, although average incomes are higher than the national average and house prices are comparatively affordable. Why would that be so? The only thing I can think of is that the incidence of life lease is relatively high in Manitoba. Unlike all other provinces, life lease residents are considered renters in Manitoba so that might explain the lower incidence of homeownership.

65+ Owner Household Incomes - 2

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Disability Rates: Do they Mean Anything?

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.

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US Occupancy Rates have Declined in 11 of 12 Quarters Since 2007

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.

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Americans Moving to Canada in Search of More Affordable Seniors’ Housing and Health Care?

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

I read a comment about this recently. The writer was hypothesizing that as costs for seniors’ housing and health care rise in the US, Americans might move to Canada or Mexico in search of more affordable alternatives.

In both cases (i.e. Canada and Mexico) the fly in the ointment for Americans actually contemplating such a move would be health care and immigration policies, but aside from that, are costs really cheaper in Canada? My first reaction was scepticism but upon re-reading a few brochures I picked up at the recent ALFA conference in Phoenix, I thought: “well, maybe it IS cheaper in Canada, at least for some types of housing and health care”.

For example, at the Forum at Desert Harbor, the daily rate for a private room in the long term care component of the campus is $280, which is to say just over $100,000 per year. There aren’t many private pay long term care facilities in Canada that are charging $280 per day.

But at the same time, the rate at the Forum for a two bedroom 922 square foot independent living apartment is only $2,868 per month (the meal package includes breakfast and one other meal). The Forum is an upscale project with lots of amenities including a lakefront location, a pool, and a grapefruit tree, to say nothing of that desert climate.

Americans would have a tough time finding a similar value in Canada. The trick at the Forum is obviously to stay out of long term care!

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What a Difference Four Years Makes

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

This week I am working in Stony Plain, a community of about 12,000 people 20 minutes west of the West Edmonton Mall, as these things are always described in the Edmonton area. It’s not where you are relative to downtown Edmonton, it’s where you are relative to the West Edmonton Mall.

On my way here I stopped off in Devon, a town of about 6,000 people midway between Stony Plain and the Edmonton International Airport. There are only 275 people over the age of 75 in Devon and yet there is a 61 unit supportive senior’s housing project (Discovery Place, The Heights) that has only one vacant unit. It is situations like this that keep market analysts humble.

But getting back to the topic of this blog, the current issue of the Edmonton Condo Guide includes a handy chart comparing year-to-date statistics for the four year period between April 2006 and April 2010. In terms of the sales-to-listing ratio, the trough over that period was in 2008, when the ratio was 37% compared to an astonishing 91% in 2006. Things have improved since 2008, but in the first four months of 2010 there were 12,365 listings on the Edmonton MLS compared to 5,645 sales. That’s a long way from the heady days of 2006—7,779 listings; 7,100 sales.

You can see the evidence of the hangover everywhere in Stony Plain. “Immediately available condos”, “condo units for rent”, “move in now”—signs like this are common. It’s nothing like Phoenix, but it is a bit unsettling all the same.

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What you could do if you had 808 units

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

I toured Friendship Village in Tempe, AZ while attending the recent ALFA conference in Phoenix. It’s spread over 43 acres and has 575 independent living units (bungalows and apartments), 91 assisted living units, and 142 care beds. There’s a pool, a fully equipped fitness facility (very busy when we popped in at 10:30am), an auditorium, a library, woodworking shops, a billiards room, a 9,000 square foot recreation centre featuring rooms for dancing, weaving, ceramics, video editing, and stained glass, and three dining areas: a cafe that is open all day and looks exactly like a real cafe, a large buffet that’s likewise open all day, and a formal dining room that is open on a reservation basis at dinner time.

The first time I saw a buffet in operation at a new upscale project in Red Deer I was taken aback because of what I assumed would be the difficulty of dealing with a buffet if you had a walker or were just generally unsteady on your feet. But people at Friendship Village seemed to manage just fine – they put their food on the seat of the walker, or staff there was around to help. And it’s worth noting that at breakfast or lunch it’s the buffet or the café and that’s it – no table service is available, which is interesting in itself. Do people stay independent longer if you force them to retrieve their own breakfast and lunch from a buffet?

Aside from the array of amenities you can offer if you have 808 units, the other advantage is that there are people everywhere – in the cafe, in the buffet, in the pool, in the fitness centre. It’s lively! It’s hard to achieve the same ambience if you’ve only got 100 units or so and it’s impossible to offer the same array of amenities. But that doesn’t mean you have to resign yourself to sepulchral silence and meals in the dining room at precisely 11:30 and 4:30. Au contraire – stay tuned for ideas.

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Fine Dining in Long Term Care: A Contradiction in Terms?

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Not in Phoenix! Or indeed all over the USA where fine dining in long term care is a definite trend. I toured a state-of-the-art not-for-profit skilled nursing facility in nearby Tempe AZ on Monday. I was profoundly impressed. The goal of the owner of the facility, Friendship Village, was to retain the ambience of a residential environment and avoid any feel of the institutional. Without question they achieved the goal. The hallways are gorgeous—no other word will do although it seems odd to describe a hallway as gorgeous. Unlike every other hallway I have seen in a care facility, they undulate. They are also carpeted, painted in beautiful colors, and highlighted with artwork and furniture at appropriate intervals.  Doorways are recessed. The contrast with many independent living communities I am familiar with could not be starker.

The dining rooms blew me away too— linen tablecloths and napkins! And menu choices! And open eating hours! I don’t like to overdo the exclamation marks but the facility was really unlike anything I have ever seen.

“Ah but what does all this cost?” you are no doubt thinking. Friendship Village is a life care community—residents buy in at the independent living stage and whatever care they need beyond that stage is provided at the same monthly cost. For example, a one bedroom unit may cost $160,000 (assuming no return of capital) plus monthly fees of $2,300 (meals, housekeeping, laundry etc). If someone buying in at this level were ever to require skilled nursing care, they would continue to pay the same monthly fee they paid in independent living (adjusted for inflationary increases).

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Kitchens in Independent Living Communities

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!

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