klaus
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Aug 30, 2007, 11:40 AM
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Probably one of the saddest aspects of retirement is finding one’s self being forced to move out of a community because of illness or infirmity. Imagine retiring to an adult lifestyle community where you make new friends and establish a whole new network of social contacts and then finding yourself after 15 or 20 years having to relocate to a retirement residence because you now require specific services that are only found in a retirement residence.
That’s how the concept of “aging in place” originated, as operators of retirement residences could see how traumatic a relocation was for their new residents, as they moved in.
At the same time, given that the average tenure of a retiree in a retirement residence is somewhere in the neighborhood of seven years, retirement residences would often find themselves with unacceptably high vacancy rates, as their residents moved on to a different level of care, such as a nursing home, or simply passed away.
The solution to that mutual problem, of course, is the aging in place scenario. Simply put, operators of retirement residences and adult lifestyle communities found common ground with their residents and discovered that it was to everyone’s mutual benefit to keep individuals living within their communities. As such, many major operators of assisted living residences built rental units or condominiums adjacent to their residences, which essentially function as a conduit for new residents for the assisted living facility.
Conversely, operators of adult lifestyle communities, particularly land-lease communities found that it was mutually beneficial to build an assisted living residence on site to accommodate their residents once the need arose.
That arrangement works for the retirees as much as it does for the operators in that they do not have to face the traumatic changes they would otherwise encounter by having to relocate to an entirely new community.
Additionally, there’s a peace of mind that’s associated with knowing that most of life’s eventualities are covered under this sort of arrangement.
Amica, about whom I wrote in these pages last year, has the aging in place concept down to a fine art in that most of its residences consist of a condominium component as well as a retirement residence. The two are usually connected through a central hub that is accessible to all residents. Amica provides some of life’s more worthwhile luxuries, as it actively caters to its condominium residents with services provided through the assisted living facility. Chief among these is their excellent dining room, as well as the available spa and personal care services.
If all operators of retirement residences could follow this simple, but effective business plan, their quest to find new residents as old ones depart would not be quite so difficult. Additionally their residents would be much happier with the knowledge that barring a catastrophic illness or death, they could remain in the same community throughout the later stages of their lives.
Klaus Rohrich is President and Creative Director of Taylor/Rohrich Associates Inc., a marketing and advertising firm that specializes in niche marketing retirement real estate developments http://www.maturitymarketing.com.
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