A place that makes you wish you were old

"We know what helps people. What helps them age in place is not covered by insurers at this point," said Laura Gitlin, director of the Center for Applied Research on Aging and Health at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

She was referring to healthcare and a study showing that periodic visits to independently living seniors by therapists can catch small difficulties before they turn into large ones.

But healthcare isn't all people need to age in place. To have a sense of wellness, we need purpose. Something to look forward to the next day. Ways to actively engage in the world.

Imagine if, instead of watching TV, you were broadcasting it. That was the idea behind the Burbank Senior Artists Colony. It's a 141-unit senior apartment community featuring 24-hour art studios, a film lab, performance space for its theater group, a resident-run internal cable TV station, and much more.

"You walk through this building and you never hear anybody talk about their aches and pains or how many medications they're on. They're just constantly talking about what they're going to do next," said Tim Carpenter of EngAge, a nonprofit organization that brings "whole person" creative programs to affordable senior housing.

The mission: "It's our vision to make aging a beginning. By providing life-enhancing programs to low-and moderate-income seniors living in affordable apartment communities, they will be given the opportunity to continue to grow intellectually, creatively, and emotionally. Programming will focus on the combination of mind, body and spirit to promote active engagement and independent living, and to provide seniors with a purpose."

Resident Suzanne Knode, who wrote her first screenplay after moving in, said "I never thought that I would be able to find something else that's new inside of me. You know that same feeling when you got out of school and the whole world was open for you? Now, all over again, the whole world is open to me and I have no idea what it's going to bring."

Everyone there is an artist, but many never called themselves that before entering a place where creativity is the air they breathe.

Six hundred people were on the waiting list before construction began, and 2,000 artistic souls are on the waiting list for the 43 affordable units that rent for $500 a month (market rate units start at $1400).

Burbank may be the home of Disney and Warner Brothers Studios. But you don't have to be in the entertainment industry to imagine creating senior communities as places anyone would want to live.

The question is, what would it take to do it here in Milwaukee? We'd love to hear your creative ideas.

Aging in community: housing, services-- the whole enchilada

Yesterday, some 30 people gathered over cheese enchiladas at the United Community Center to discuss ways to "get it right" with senior housing. And that includes making sure the services are there to support a great life into and through old age.

The Next Steps meeting was a follow-up of our earlier Housing Options Summit and, informally, of the UWM Senior Housing Ideas Competition.

Around the table were developers, case managers, architects, mortgage lenders, senior advocates, landscape architects, county department directors, grad students, consultants who put together deals, program developers, senior citizens, and more. Most were concerned mainly with older adults, but some represented the community of disabled people, whose needs are very similar.

They came because they know about the gaps in housing and supportive services that make it hard to age in place—or live at home with disabilities. And they brought with them ideas, hopes, frustrations, and most of all, a desire to make a real difference now.

What’s needed is affordable, appropriate, accessible housing. Right now, the supply of housing that meets all three of those criteria is small. Services and the stuff to maintain a life need to be incorporated into the residence or the nearby community. Safety, beauty, respect, and community life matter. So does transportation. And so does variety: no one size fits all.

No surprises there. But what’s missing is coordination to fit all the parts together, resources and a plan. Political scientist Norton Long said forty years ago that people building economically viable cities are coming to realize that the vision they are seek is not just bigger roads and more tax base but “the possibility of attaining a shared common goal of a better life.” Plans come and go, and we keep trying to figure out how to do it better.

The next step in the process will be engaging in strategic planning, looking at models that work and can be replicated (or improved upon), like Lapham Park. We’re looking for ways to bring all our knowledge and wisdom to existing and new planning and decision-making processes.

We are also looking at what we need to build in terms of better coordination between the range of services and housing options. Stay tuned for more information or forward your name if you are interested in being a part of these exciting developments.

Banishing the plagues of loneliness, helplessness, and boredom

While nearly everyone says that they want to stay at home until they die, not everyone can. And not everyone should. Sometimes, living at home can mean loneliness, helplessness, and boredom. Another sort of setting can be more like what home should be than the places people have been living.

Some successful solutions will be explored in the second of the pre-competition events leading to the UWM Senior Housing Ideas Competition tonight at 6:30 pm, Zelazo Hall. (Our Expanding Housing Options Summit was the first.)

Dr. William Thomas, founder of the Eden Alternative (EA), will speak. If you don't know about the EA, it's a movement to revolutionize the way people live, especially older adults in the places we've been calling nursing homes.

According to the EA website,

We create coalitions of people and organizations that are committed to creating better social and physical environments for people. We are dedicated to helping others create enlivening environments and the elimination of the plagues of Loneliness, Helplessness, and Boredom. We are dedicated to helping people grow.

The core concept of The Eden Alternative™ is strikingly simple. We must teach ourselves to see the environments as habitats for human beings rather than facilities for the frail and elderly. We must learn what Mother Nature has to teach us about the creation of vibrant, vigorous habitats.

Living in a vital community. Isn't that what we all want?

Promise you'll keep me at home

"She never complains, and her brothers and sisters don't complain," Amy says. "But I sit back and wonder when my mom will run herself down. She's 67; she has her own retirement to deal with. I worry that she's going to hurt herself trying to help (Grandfather). Sometimes I wonder if this is what my grandfather would have really wanted had he known it would be like this. I wonder if everyone's quality of time together would be better in a different situation.

Jeff Opdyke's Love & Money column "A Parent Ages, and a Promise is Kept" in today's Wall Street Journal Sunday section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel raises hard questions about aging in place--and the human cost to relatives and loved ones.

Opdyke's mother-in-law struggles to manage two households, with the help of four siblings and occasional aides who care for their 94-year-old father. His wife, Amy, a nurse, believes assisted living for her grandfather would be best for everyone. But her aunts and uncles believe that the highest good is to honor a promise made long ago, when the world was different.

This Friday, the Milwaukee Aging Consortium's Expanding Housing Options Summit will explore what it takes to let people age in place--or in community. We probably won't engage in those wrenching personal dilemmas. But we will be able to consider existing and future places and services for improving the lives of elderly people and their caregivers.

Some time ago I heard about a Canadian plan that made no-interest loans to families for building "mother-in-law" additions to their houses. Sounds like a win-win situation. Everyone gets to live in one household, and the younger family increases its net worth through increasing the value of its house.

What are your dreams/wishes/ideas for housing?