Elder Cohousing
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Musings: Establishing a Healthy, Sustainable Lifestyle for an Aging Generation
Submitted by Chuck Durrett on Wed, 08/05/2009 - 14:55Last year Americans drove 5 billion miles caring for seniors in their homes (Meals on Wheels, Whistle Stop Nurses, and so on). In our small, semi-rural county in the Sierra foothills, Telecare made 60,000 trips in massive, lumbering, polluting vans-buses – usually carrying only one senior at a time – schlepping a couple thousand seniors total over hill and dale to doctor’s appointments, to pick up medicine, or to see friends. In our cohousing community of 21 seniors, I have never seen a single Telecare bus in the driveway. In cohousing it happens organically by caring neighbors: “Can I catch a ride with you?”; “Are you headed to the drug store?”, etc. And this alternative is much more fun and inexpensive for all involved, and much less damaging to the environment. Wolf Creek Lodge, a new senior cohousing community about to start construction, has 30 units to be built on 1 acre within walking distance of downtown Grass Valley, population 12,000.
Affordable Senior & Multigenerational Cohousing Models from Northern Europe.
Saturday 1:30 – 3:00 pm
Gain new ideas on creating affordable nonprofit senior-friendly housing. Cohousing and its variations—ethnic, quilted, facilitated, and neighborhood oriented-- are some of the models of collaborative living being created in Holland, Germany and Scandinavia. These examples combine community-oriented housing and often some form of health delivery, with nonprofit support, demonstrating the strengths of aging together with mutual help.
PRESENTERS: Maria Brenton has written and consulted in the field of senior cohousing for more than a decade, working with the Older Women's Cohousing (OWCH) Company Ltd, London to develop a community of some thirty women in the London area. Maria's research into senior cohousing communities or 'living groups' in the Netherlands has led her to try to replicate their model, based on a mix of private equity and public subsidy, in the UK.
Developing and Living the Senior Cohousing Experience
Saturday 10:30 – 12:00 am
Jim Leach and Annie Russell will distill their years of experience developing, and now living in senior cohousing into ten easy to implement guidelines and principles that you can apply to your own development. These ten areas will cover development, marketing and community building.
Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living.
Two Day Workshop: Wed, 6/24/09 – Thur, 6/25/09 (8:30 am – 5:00 pm)
Price: $195, including lunch
This workshop presented by Senior Cohousing author, Charles Durrett, will help participants examine issues related to aging and aging in place, within the context of a safe and comfortable environment of inquiry and discovery and in the context of cohousing. It seeks to foster the consciousness necessary for seniors to choose among a broader set of choices and become more deterministic about their future. Participants in this experiential workshop will engage in a comprehensive exploration of the issues that surface when working with a diverse group of people who are actively grappling with aging, denial, and the growth necessary to become more self-deterministic about their own future.
Musings: Seniors versus Elders
Submitted by Chuck Durrett on Wed, 10/01/2008 - 15:30 in
An acquaintance of mine, Chris Zimmerman, owns and operates a couple of assisted-care facilities in Alameda, California. He inherited one at age 23 and subsequently built a second one. He’s now 60, and despite the limitations of an assisted care environment, he has developed astute theories about seniors and elders.
Like many observers of the cultural scene, he agrees that seniors today are given little respect, but he also believes that they have to earn the respect that they’d like to command. He argues that seniors have abdicated their role as respected elders. Being an elder once meant earning respect by playing an active role in teaching younger generations, a role that’s seldom fulfilled today. He believes that seniors earn elderhood by helping younger generations understand how to be accountable.
What is elder or senior cohousing?
Cohousing came to the U.S. 15 years ago from Denmark, where intergenerational communities gave birth to a successful, age-specific cohousing model for active elders. The first elder-only cohousing neighborhoods for active adults, 55 and above, are just now emerging in the U.S. Design features include easy access for all levels of physical ability and also may include optional studio residences in the common house to provide living quarters for home health aides whose services may be shared by several residents.
You can read more about it here.
Multigenerational Cohousing is also supportive of Elders. Read more about Aging in Community.
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