Aging in Community

The Halifax Working Group on Aging has begun placing an article in each issue of the Halifax Shambhala Centre newsletter (the Banner) to stimulate discussion about aging related issues. This article, from the Sept/Oct 2011 issue, explores some issues related to housing.

Aging in Community

Where will we live as we grow old? This question seems to arise more and more often these days. I hear it from friends who are sixty and older, and I hear it in my own mind. Where do we picture ourselves living over the next ten or twenty years?
One vision that seems quite common involves living where we have easy access to contact with family and friends. Some people describe this as “aging in community”.
It sounds great. You have family and friends available for social support and for more intensive help should you need it. But the question is how to achieve the goal of “aging in community”.

Over the past several years I’ve been collecting some possible answers to that question. Partly this has been part of my role as chair of the Shambhala Working Group on Aging, a part of the international Shambhala governance structure. Partly it has been related to my personal situation. I turn 70 in November. In the past two years I see increasing signs of my own physical and mental vulnerability. The idea that I may actually need some frequent support from people beyond my immediate family seems more and more believable.

So here are a few ideas I’ve come upon. They don’t make up a comprehensive survey of how we could live as we get old, there are many approaches and projects I haven’t included and don’t even know about. And I do have my own bias about which approaches are practical. Please keep that in mind as your read this article.
For the purposes of the article I have divided the approaches into two main categories: (1) physical community, with people living in close physical proximity, and (2) virtual community, with people linked together but not necessarily physically near one another.

Physical community: Often, when I hear people talk about aging in community it is in the context of intentionally creating some kind of physical community. That is, moving into a living situation that is physically very close to a number of other people. Here are few examples:

There are some lovely and inspiring projects that have been going on for many years, such as the Camp Hill movement(http://www.camphill.org/). These are almost utopian projects, set in rural settings, with a wonderfully humanistic philosophy of aging.

An interesting current trend is Co-housing. With careful planning, a community is brought together to live in close proximity to one another. There are some lovely co-housing projects for seniors such as the Silver Sage development in Boulder, Colorado (http://silversagevillage.com). Senior co-housing usually does not include the ‘levels of care’ concept used in retirement communities.

Retirement communities with multiple ‘levels of care’ are a popular approach in mainstream North America. You buy into the overall project and start with a nice apartment where you are totally independent. When you begin to need for assistance you can move into a different section of the community where supports are available. Some Shambhalians have looked into the possibility of gathering a group of friends and all buying into the same retirement community. (In a similar way, a group of friends could organize themselves to move into the same co-operative housing building).

There are many "Faith-based retirement communities” (http://www.bestguide-retirementcommunities.com/christianretirementcommunities.html) but very few of them are Buddhist.

However, recently the San Francisco Zen Center has been working on developing a large retirement community in Northern California. They partnered with Northern California Presbyterian Homes and Services, a big non-profit that already runs several large retirement communities. A marketing study has been completed. Their systematic business approach is an interesting model.

Could we, as Shambhala practitioners, create a physical community, a cohousing project, a retirement community? From what I have seen so far the obstacles are that, like any large-scale project, it requires a long and complex process of planning, and major financial investment.

Virtual community: Aging in Place / Aging at Home. Another approach that may less complex and costly is to create a ‘virtual community’ that supports people in their current living situations.

This kind of “Aging in Community” was explored by social workers in the 1980s. They were trying to figure out how to efficiently provide services to seniors living in urban areas. They realized that creating new community housing that would bring the seniors together in a close physical community was both expensive and not very popular with the seniors themselves. Most seniors wanted to stay where they were, even if the conditions were not perfect. The idea of then was to bring the social services to the seniors where they lived, rather than moving the seniors to the services.

The province of Ontario has invested heavily in an‘aging at home’ initiative (http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/program/ltc/33_ontario_strategy.html) that includes home health care and home renovations.

The Village Movement: Recently the basic idea of ‘aging at home’ has been developed in an innovative way by seniors, many with significant financial assets, who want to stay in their own homes as they age, but recognize the need for increased support. Rather than waiting for government or social agencies to create supportive program, they did it themselves.

The innovative process they used was simply to join with other people in a similar situation and set up a group buying organization that would facilitate affordable and efficient access to any extra help you need so you can stay in your current home. These kinds of organizations are appearing in a number of places under the name of the Village Movement (http://www.vtvnetwork.org).

One of the original and most highly developed ‘villages’ is on Beacon Hill in downtown Boston. Their website (http://www.beaconhillvillage.org)provides a great introduction to this approach. It shows the wide range of services to which they provide access. These range from home health care to delivery of groceries to plumbers. One interesting feature is that there are membership categories for people of varying income.

So what is involved in creating a ‘village’? In brief, a group of people (it could be exclusively seniors, or not), form a buying group and negotiate priority access, and discount price, from professional services of various kinds that are relevant to helping the members stay in their homes as they age. In doing so a community is formed. It is interesting that a ‘village’ is not primarily set up to have its members help one another directly, but by participating in the organization the opportunities for mutual support are obviously enhanced.

Conclusion: This article is a ‘finger painting’, rather than a rigorous discussion of housing options. It is intended to stimulate discussion. As we all continue to explore our options for where and how to live as we grow older there are clearly a wide range of possibilities. As is evident, my own bias is that the “village” concept is one well worth considering in more depth.

--David Whitehorn
9August 2011, Halifax

Thanks to Tom Bell, Pam Denicola and Dr. Andrea Sherman for insightful comments that helped shape this article.