Senior Housing Options

The World of Retirement Communities, Assisted Living and Continuing Care

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The world of senior housing has changed quite a bit over the last 50 years. When today’s seniors were children growing up, there were only a couple of choices of where seniors could live during their golden years.

With the numbers of folks who are baby boomers and seniors today, those couple of options have grown and multiplied and the amount of choices available in senior housing is quite amazing.

Most of the choices revolve around how much care a senior needs when they are living there. Although there are some senior living developments where residents share something in common. Sometimes this is a particular interest in life, like golf, and sometimes this is a particular kind of condition like Alzheimer’s or dementia.

To be sure, there is an almost bewildering array of options available.

The internet is a great place to find information about these senior housing choices. And it’s good to start with an overview of the different type of housing choices.

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Retirement Communities

Senior retirement communities used to be found almost exclusively in the southern and southwestern states in the US. In particular, Florida and Arizona. Nice places, with a lot of warm weather and sunshine. The marketing departments of the state governments and some of the larger cities created great campaigns to convince folks to move there.

 

Very successful and many, many people moved to cities like Miami and Phoenix.

But now, there is a huge increase in the number of senior people because of the baby boomers. And retirement communities have sprung up in every state in the US. There are hundreds, if not thousands of them and if someone wanted to retire to places like Nome, Green Bay and Topeka, they could find retirement communities there.

 

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Assisted Living Facilities

Assisted living facilities are places for seniors to live who are in need of a bit of assistance in their daily lives.

This does not mean financial assistance, but rather a bit of help in areas like preparing meals, taking medication or even having a bath or a shower. There is a wide range op options within this category and these can range from apartments style units to more dorm like or even hospital like settings. What sets these facilities apart is what level of help that can be afforded to the residents rather than what the living setting is.

In many of these facilities, there is some transportation to public places, the mall or the doctor’s office and some even offer help with tasks like doing the laundry.

Residential assisted living facilities for seniors can vary in size from very small with 10 or fewer residents or really big places with hundreds of senior residents. Pretty much there is a place that can accommodate almost anyone’s personal preferences and needs.

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Continuing Care Retirement Communities

Continuing Care Retirement Communities, also known as CCRC’s are residential facilities for seniors and baby boomers who are looking for a lifetime of security. When folks buy into one of these communities, they do so with the understanding that if their health needs change, they can continue to live within that community.

This is an idea that builds a great idea of community. Most people start looking for a CCRC to live in when they are in pretty good physical shape. The understanding is that by living in a CCRC, even if your physical needs change as you continue to live there, that you will be provided for.

If you develop more needs for nursing care or help with preparing meals or with other daily routines, many other kinds of facilities would ask you to leave their community. This is not the case with a continuing care facility. The idea is to provide a continuum of care so that once a person moves to a CCRC; they may continue to live there for the rest of their life.

It is possible that as a person’s needs change, they would have to move to a different part of the community, but you would still get to live there in your home community. This is a big plus. You can keep your friends, the ties you have established to the community and need not worry that if your situation changes, that you have to worry about finding a new place to live.

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Home Care

Home care is the term that is used nowadays to refer to the idea of a senior remaining at home and being cared for by someone else. It used to be that this was pretty much the only kind of living arrangement that seniors could get unless they moved into a nursing home.

 

There are many forms of senior housing options now, but home care continues to be a very popular option. Many seniors are cared for at tome by family members but there are also providing agencies that will send care givers to the place where a senior is living to offer some particular type of care.

This could include some nursing care or help with some of the activities of daily living. Usually, though the term home care means non-medical care giving by either family members or care givers. As opposed to Home Health care, which pretty much means skilled nursing care.

This is a nice kind of arrangement and is much more in keeping with the idea of an intact family unit than some of the other senior housing options.

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Independent Living Facilities

Independent living facilities are those residential arrangements for seniors where the residents are independent.

Sounds so simple when you say it like that, but what many of these residential facilities offer are simple modifications that make independent living for folks who are 55 plus.

 

The type of living facility can vary, but what usually denotes these great types of places is that things are designed to be handier for the residents. For instance, if the living units are like small detached homes or condos, the landscaping is designed for minimal maintenance. This make sit easy for the residents to still take care of their homes, but in a way that does not involve a lot of strenuous activity.

Sometimes the units are built like regular development communities except that everyone who lives there must be of a certain minimum age. Usually either 55 or 62. There are often clubhouses provided and pools and tennis courts and even golf courses. Not that every independent living facility for seniors is like this, but many are. And some are like small apartment complexes where everything is on a single floor and amenities are located within easy walking distance.

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Alzheimers Care Facilities

No one can tell you that if you are living with someone who has Alzheimers, that you have it easy in any way. You don’t. Trying to care for a loved on who has this or another form of dementia can be emotionally exhausting. The growth in the number of people who are in the baby boomer age bracket has also brought a corresponding rise in the number of people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

If there is a good side to this situation, its that the knowledge of Alzheimer’s has increased in general and that there are many more options available now than there used to be to help care for seniors with this particular form of dementia.

There are many senior living facilities that feature a special living arrangement for their residents who have this condition and these kinds of modifications help keep Alzheimer’s patients from wandering around and hurting themselves or others.

It is also a great idea to search around on the internet for more information about this disease so that you can get a good idea of what is actually involved in the disease itself and the kinds of care available for your loved on.

Senior housing options are as varied as the people who are now officially seniors. The amount of baby boomers in the world population who are going to be looking for alternate living options is only going to rise. And now is as good a time as any (better actually) to begin your exploration of senior living options for yourself or for your loved ones.