Alternative Housing Options for the Aging

The New Old Age blog featured a post last week discussing NORCs (naturally occurring retirement communities.) These are communities that were not designed as retirement communities, but end up having a large number of elderly residents. Many of these communities take steps to make sure the needs of aging residents are met.

NORCs exist all over; probably half of Miami Beach, Fla., was a NORC at one time. Watching this little community cope with shopping and banking and constant medical visits, I have wondered why services can’t be brought to these residents. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have a nurse visit weekly, instead of each person making a laborious trip to a doctor’s office? For the senior van to schedule regular excursions to ShopRite? For the high school orchestra to give concerts in the community room, since so few older residents go out after dark?

A number of NORCs do offer this kind of help. Twenty-five states have NORC supportive service programs, according to the queen of NORCs, Fredda Vladeck, who runs the United Hospital Fund’s Aging in Place Initiative. New York leads the list with 54 NORC programs operating in high-rises, garden apartment complexes and neighborhoods of single-family homes; Indiana comes in second. The common mission of the programs, Ms. Vladeck said, is “transforming communities into good places to grow old.”

The state of New York is giving a health and rehabilitation center in Syracuse a $12 million grant to develop 13 "Green Houses". Once the houses are complete, two other traditional nursing facilities will be closed.

The total $40 million project will include construction of 13 of the small homes each housing 12 senior citizens, as well as 100 new assisted living program slots, which provide an alternative to nursing home care.

The project is supposed to move people away from the traditional nursing home setting and into more assisted care settings. This project will ultimately eliminate the need for 176 skilled nursing beds in the region.

Learn more about the Green House project.