10 Senior Housing Development Trends for 2008
Look for these 10 senior housing development trends from 2007 to pick up even more steam in 2008 as the age wave gains force:1. Congregational Senior Housing: People want to live in nurturning, vibrant communities. Churches want to extend their ministries, strengthen their congregations and build community. Congregational senior housing, such as the visionary ELCA project in Sandpoint, Idaho is a win-win.2. College Campus Senior Housing: Lifelong learning is a key part of successful aging. Look for more colleges to create intergenerational communities and see the benefits of senior learners and neighbors.3. Increased Technology: Technology is allowing members of the sandwich generation to be greater participants in their parents' lives and care. At the same time, it is giving people more control over their health and independence. Look for increased growth in interactive technology in 2008.4. Memory Care: Every 72 seconds someone develops Alzheimer’s Disease. New memory care households focus solely on the challenges of Alzheimer’s and dementia, while eliminating the institutional style of the past.5. Green Construction: Enviro-friendly and sustainable development is increasing in senior housing and will continue to grow in 2008.6. Catered Living: Combines independent living and al la carte assisted living services. This housing type allows a person to stay in their home even when they need or want more assistance.7. Smart, Innovative Design: Look for innovative designers, such as Michael Graves to increasingly bring their skills to aging and using smart, creative design to improve people’s lives. 8. Livable Communities: More cities are getting hip to integrating senior housing close to other community resources such as transportation, shopping and libraries, rather than sticking them in the fringes next to nothing.9. Successful Aging Centers: Look for wellness centers connected to senior housing that help people of all ages and abilities nurture their physical, intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual and vocational health. These increasingly serve as larger community resources for successful aging.10: Virtual Retirement Communities: In this model, all the amenities of a senior housing community are brought to an exisiting neighborhood, such as the model Beacon Hill Village. New bricks and mortar might include a very small health center that provides more intensive care when needed.We invite you to download Ecumen White Papers on a range of subjects related to changing aging, including senior technology and senior housing development tips in our online library
Aging Services Entrepreneurs Build Special Employee Investment Fund
A very nice story in today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press about colleagues being there for each other and investing in each other.Thanks to everyone who has made this special employee investment program possible, especially Ecumen charitable contributions team members Mary Ann Dorsher, Robin Krois and Jean Robson, and the many Ecumen team members who contribute so generously.If you’d like to support Ecumen’s work in 'creating home' for America’s seniors, please go here. Happy Holidays from all of us at Ecumen.Workers support each other in crisesEcumen provides payroll-deduction fund for employees to contribute to - and turn to in need.By Julie Forster, St. Paul Pioneer PressJennifer Redman was devastated when southern Minnesota floods heavily damaged her Owatonna home in August.The first floor - her family’s main living area - filled with seven feet of water within an hour. Today, she’s still trying to make the house livable for herself and her family and recover from the $68,000 in damage the storm caused their home.Help came from an unlikely source: Her employer, Shoreview-based Ecumen, cut her a check for $2,500. It’s a gift from her fellow employees that she doesn’t have to pay back.The Family Helping Family program at Ecumen, an operator and owner of senior housing and services throughout Minnesota, enables employees to help their co-workers through financial emergencies by making regular payroll deductions to a special fund. It’s an unusual program aimed at helping co-workers who face home foreclosure, a medical nightmare or other crisis situations that pop up suddenly. No one has to contribute to get an interest-free loan or grant, and most of the requests are approved within a day.Redman, who works in Owatonna managing senior apartments, used the money to replace the blown windows on her house. Now she has a percentage taken out of her check each pay period, not because she has to repay the grant, but to help her co-workers when they face some kind of financial crunch. 'It can really come back in a big way to help you,' she said. 'I realize that what happened to me can happen to anyone.'Rising gasoline and heating costs, diminishing home values and the skyrocketing rates on adjustable-rate mortgages all are taking their toll on workers' paychecks these days, said Mary Ann Dorsher, the Ecumen executive who shaped the employee-giving program. 'Those costs are rising much more rapidly than salaries in general, so as a result people do not have the savings they’ve traditionally had. In a moment of crisis they are really caught.'People whose houses burned down this year also received money. About a dozen people who needed money to help keep their homes out of foreclosure received loans and grants. Some receive money to pay for classes to help them advance in their careers. In other cases, they need a car to get to work.More than 300 employees contributed to the fund in 2007 through one-time gifts or regular deductions from their paycheck, sometimes of as little as $1. Any of the company’s 4,000 employees are eligible for grants or loans. All they have to do is write a one-page note on why they need the money and the amount of the request. After a 15-minute interview, Dorsher, who is the nonprofit’s vice president of charitable contributions, and two other colleagues make a decision on the application; they have approved 98 percent of the requests. They don’t mull it over; the key is getting money to the recipient swiftly.This week, for example, a nurse’s aide in northern Minnesota found that her furnace was leaking carbon monoxide. The furnace had to be turned off immediately, leaving the woman without heat. She had to choose between buying a new furnace and paying the mortgage. In a panic, she called Ecumen at 10 in the morning. A few hours later, the check for $2,500 was in the mail. 'A lot of people just don’t have that additional $2,500 above and beyond what they budget for,' Dorsher said.A year ago in December, there were a few applications for $500 to $700. But this month a small flood of applications rolled into the office, Dorsher said, and the requests are much larger, in the area of $2,500 to $3,000. The total amount of grants and loans this year is expected to exceed $200,000, a tripling over three years. By year-end, more than 200 loans will be given out. Next year the amount of giving likely will increase, Ecumen said.Wendy Traffie, a housing manager at Lakeview Commons in Maplewood, needed money recently to cover the closing costs on a home. Overwhelmed by a death in the family in late summer, she misunderstood the closing date and thought it was further out. 'A little bit of communication skills would have prevented it,' Traffie said. She was in a bind she hadn’t banked on. She received a $1,200 interest-free loan that she paid back. On her staff this year, 26 people have received loans or grants.Because the need keeps growing, Dorsher and others are working hard to try to raise new contributions each year. New money and loans that are repaid, along with a modest return on the fund investments, help keep the fund thriving. The emergency fund is operated within the larger Ecumen Foundation that has $11 million in assets. The portion going to emergencies is invested with a professional brokerage firm in easily accessed liquid assets.A nonprofit organization affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Ecumen generated $117 million in revenue last year and operates more than 60 senior housing and assisted-living homes in Minnesota and surrounding states. Given the increasing shortage of caregivers and the high turnover rate, the emergency fund program also helps Ecumen differentiate itself as an employer and keep good employees, said Eric Schubert, Ecumen’s spokesman.'Obviously we can’t give out stock options, but there are creative things we can do, and this is one of those,' Schubert said.
Should We Put Up Our Dukes Against Aging?
Do we really need to fight aging? Does aging need to be cured?What do you think?
A Changing Aging Question
We’re really good at asking the question, What do you want to be when you grow up?'Shouldn’t we start asking: 'What do you want to be when you are old?'
Colorado: Working to Ride the Age Wave
Colorado gets it.Brent Green, author, boomer and marketing expert based in Colorado, blogged recently about Silverprint Colorado, a new initiative in that state to seize the ample opportunity of the Age Wave. It was designed by businesses, citizens, public officials and others. It’s goal is direct:
Colorado will establish a culture for positive aging addressing the needs, contributions and opportunities for all its older residents.
It has five focus areas:
1. Coordinated long-term care.
2. Transportation
3. Training professionals about seniors and educating the public
4. Health/wellness
5. Civic engagement, volunteerism and workforce
As Silverprint Colorado highlights: Aging is a lifestyle, business and economic opportunity.
Will Our Next President Be a Caregiver?
Wonder what the Presidential candidates' experiences are with caregiving? Find out in this AARP long-term care interview.
Aging is a Business and Economic Issue, Part 2
Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts recently wrote an article about aging as a business and economic issue.The economics of aging also are impacting religious communities. For example:Catholic archdioceses across the country are holiding fundraising appeals for the Retirement Fund For Religious. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, where the fund is housed, estimates that by 2023 religious orders could face more than $20 billion in unfunded retirement liabilities. Some other interesting stats:- $2 billion to $9 billion: That’s how the gap between assets available for the cost of living and health care for senior religious has grown in the last two decades. It’s expected to continue growing.- $1.6 billion: The projected annual cost of care for senior priests and nuns. Compare that with the combined Social Security benefits of all retired religious: $184 million per year.- 37,000: Number of Catholic religious in the U.S. past age 70.
Long-Term Care and The Presidential Candidates
Wondering what the Presidential Candidates are thinking about aging services and long-term care? (It’s kind of unreal that they’re not thinking more when you look at the age wave.)Read this post at the AAHSA Future of Aging blog.
Three Cool Things in Senior Housing
Three cool things in senior housing coming over the Changing Aging' transom: 1. Green Development: More communities are embracing senior housing development that’s beneficial to people and the environment. For example, The Residences at Creekside in Lakewood, CO, which opened earlier this year have a ton of solar power and other environmental friendly features (and it’s a cool looking building, too). 2. Purpose Workshops: The Purpose Project of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality and Healing helps people answer the question, 'Why Do I Want to Get Out of Bed Today? That’s important because it’s essential to successful aging. Augustana Homes of Minneapolis is holding Purpose Project workshops. 3. Avenidas Village in San Francisco: This village is not a place but the latest membership program that helps people stay in their own homes by providing support - everything from the medical to the mundane. This type of senior housing will no doubt continue to arise across America.You can read about other senior housing trends in our newest white paper.If you have other things to add to this list, please do so.
10 Tips for Successful Aging
Posted by Patricia Montgomery, Director, Vitalize! Wellness Centre, at Parmly LifePointes, an Ecumen CommunitySuccessful aging is about the ability of a person to take control of one’s own wellness, but not just physical wellness, also their social, spiritual, intellectual, vocational, and emotional wellness.
Please share your tips … .