Many Older Adults Desire To Age-In-Place

I am responding to question number 2. Many older adults desire to age-in-place, this “refers to the expressed desire to remain in one’s own home or at least in one’s home community for the remainder of life.” (Lecture Slides) There are many things that might help foster the goal of aging-in-place including: age-friendly/livable communities, flexible housing and universal design, naturally occurring retirement communities, the virtual village concept, cohousing, intentional (niche) communities, elder cottages, home-sharing. “Older adults want to be where the environment is familiar, neighbors can be relied on for assistance and socializing, and they have some sense of control.” (Hooyman, Kawamoto, Kiyak. Aging Matters: An Introduction to Social
Universal design “is the design of products and places that allow choice and flexibilty by people of all ability levels.” (Hooyman, Kawamoto, Kiyak. Aging Matters: An Introduction to Social Gerontology) This includes things like bathrooms with roll in showers, hands-free facets, nonskid flooring, same lighting through out the house, among other things. Something similar to universal design is flexible housing. Flexible housing are “homes that can be built and remodeled for use throughout the lifetime.” (Hooyman, Kawamoto, Kiyak. Aging Matters: An Introduction to Social Gerontology) This could include moveable walls or wide hallways to make it wheelchair accessible. These both allow the famlies to change aspects in their houses as the family grows and as they get older. This is important for aging-in-place because this way the elderly people do not have to move houses when they need a wheel chair or need to switch things up, their home already alows them to do so and they won’t have to
“Cohousing communities are clusters of 10-30 people individually owned housing units (attached or single-family homes) where families of all ages, or older adults only, live independently.” (Hooyman, Kawamoto, Kiyak. Aging Matters: An Introduction to Social Gerontology) The cohousing come in with the common house they share for social and recreational activities, community meetings, and occasional group meals. The residents usually share responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning the shared or common house, any yard care, and physical maintenance. This is helpful for aging in place because they have a social aspect and they get to share some of the house-hold work with others. Most of the existing cohousing communities are comprised of younger people. The communities like this for elders are build by ones with younger residents and they are usually smaller. Other benefits for elders living in this kind of community are they remain active and it prevents