Housing Options

The retirement community of the future

By: Sarah Bruyn Jones
The retirement community of the future

With retirees increasingly worrying about outliving their savings, Friendship Retirement Community is looking to address the concern with the assistance of architecture students. The Roanoke retirement community that currently is home to nearly 900 people is in the early stages of developing a research partnership with two of Virginia’s leading architecture schools. The aim is to define and design the retirement community of the future.

New technology enables aging in place

By: Laurie Orlov and Barbara Ruben
New technology enables aging in place

From wireless monitoring systems to devices that call for emergency response, technology that helps older adults live at home is growing by leaps and bounds. Below are five devices that have recently gone on the market. They not only allow people to live at home longer, but let them communicate with family members quickly and easily.

Villages help older homeowners stay put

By: Barbara Ruben
Villages help older homeowners stay put

According to many surveys, most retirees would prefer to remain in their present home in a familiar, intergenerational neighborhood rather than move to a retirement community. But what about all the chores? And how can homeowners obtain qualified healthcare and transportation when needed? One solution can be to form supportive neighborhood “villages,” where residents pool their resources to hire a concierge who can arrange various services, negotiate discounts and organize community events.

Cottages bring caregiving to the backyard

By: Anne Ball
Cottages bring caregiving to the backyard

Virginia minister Ken Dupin heard the worries over and over again from parishioners. There were older church members wondering how they could remain independent when their daily living needs increased with age, and younger members concerned about frail loved ones living on their own. So he envisioned a high-tech, fully-furnished diminutive modular home that could be placed in a caregiver’s backyard for an aging loved one. After years of planning and work with innovative thinkers at Virginia Tech University, the first 12 by 25-foot prefab MedCottage was unveiled in May.

What’s a ‘continuing care’ community?

By: Jane Bennett Clark
What’s a ‘continuing care’ community?

It’s an intriguing but tricky sell: Leave your home and neighborhood while you’re still relatively healthy and move to a retirement community that offers a range of housing, country-club-style amenities and access to future care. To pay for your new setting, called a continuing care retirement community (or CCRC), you fork over a hefty entrance fee, stiff monthly fees or both. Many people use the proceeds from the sale of their house to finance the price of admission.

Remodel or renovate to stay in your home

By: Meg Handley
Remodel or renovate to stay in your home

This spring, when Travis Slocum and his partner contemplated selling their home in Washington, D.C., they had high hopes of upgrading to a larger place. After all, in recent months, nationwide news has underscored falling home prices and historically low mortgage rates, both boons for would-be home buyers. But Slocum found the selection disappointing. “We really didn’t find anything on the market that ‘wowed’ us,” he said. “[Some] might have had more space, but they weren’t as updated, or they were well out of our price range.”

Mediators help families settle care disputes

By: Erin Peterson
Mediators help families settle care disputes

In 2007, John and Ginger Price knew that it was time to move John’s mother, Mayna, from an assisted-living facility in South Carolina to a nursing home near their home in Seven Hills, Ohio. John’s sister, who lived in South Carolina, could no longer shoulder the increasing caregiving responsibilities. But Mayna was having none of it. “She didn’t want to move,” said Ginger, 65. “If anything, she wanted us to move down to South Carolina.”

Caregiving from a distance? Plan ahead

By: Christopher J. Gearon
Caregiving from a distance? Plan ahead

Visiting her mother a little more than a year ago, Ann Hofkin confronted a harsh reality: The 84-year-old was slipping. Checks weren’t cashed, the cat’s litter box was dirty, and there wasn’t much food in the refrigerator. The usually tidy home was in disarray. Hofkin’s mother also seemed depressed. She had little interest in eating. “I was concerned that she was taking very poor care of herself,” Hofkin, 65, said.

What do people think of assisted living?

By: Erin Roth
What do people think of assisted living?

For the past nine years, a team of researchers from the Center for Aging Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has been studying assisted living settings in Maryland from urban, rural and suburban locales. With funding from the National Institute on Aging, we have interviewed more than 500 residents, family members and staff members in 17 different assisted living settings, giving us insight into their everyday experiences.

When cluttered living turns into hoarding

By: Valerie Lambros
When cluttered living turns into hoarding

There are probably many of us who have homes or offices that are less neat than we’d like them to be. Maybe there are piles of papers, files or books that we put off sorting because we’ve grown accustomed to them, and they don’t interfere with our daily routines. This tendency is common and rarely cause for concern. Unfortunately, for some people the accumulation of stuff can develop into a more advanced state of clutter, turning a few piles into roomfuls of belongings that get in the way of living life. These people suffer from hoarding.