Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Long Term Care (LTC) Insurance - What are your facts?

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

Carol – –

Building or setting aside an apartment for a caregiver is a very popular idea 
in Cohousing.  Many of us bought into this idea as a solution without much 
thinking about it.  It seems like such an easy solution and so congruent with 
Cohousing values.

Aside from the Financial (and maybe legal) issues of providing housing for a 
caregiver here are some questions I have about this:

1 what if one or more people needing a caregiver doesn't like The caregiver?

2. Who chooses the caregiver?

3. How many people can one caregiver manage?

4. If people need 24 hour care you're going to need more than one caregiver.   
You're going to need a place for multiple caregivers.  You may need this even 
if people don't need 24 hour caregiving.

5. People don't work 24/7. What happens when the caregiver takes a day off, 
goes on vacation, get sick, or quits? 

We need to get seriously real about aging in our cohousing  community. And I 
mean seriously. We need to learn from experts on aging outside of Cohousing 
what models are already and actual on doing to engage the space between healthy 
aging and dying.  We need experts with a 30,000 foot view.

Additionally we need to inform the aging experts about what gifts and resources 
Cohousing can bring to the conversation about caring for people throughout 
their life span.

I do not buy the argument that once people reach a certain level of need that 
they should find another place to live outside of their cohousing community. 
This just goes against every grain of instinct I have about what cohousing 
communities are about. If we can't figure out a way to keep our elders in our 
communities then we're no different than any other standard housing 
development.   

Offloading elderly to nursing homes is The Default action of our society right 
now. I believe we can solve this quandry because we already have a leg up on 
all other kinds of communities. We're already intentional, we're already self 
run, and we've already shown we are the leading wedge  in  mainstream 
collaborative living. 

I urge you to mark off on your calendars now to attend the upcoming Aging in 
Community conference to be held in Salt Lake City May 20-21 in Salt Lake City 
Utah. This is where we can start having these conversations and where we might 
actually come out with some solutions.

Ann Zabaldo
Takoma Village Cohousing 
Washington DC

All the mis spelling, grammatical errors, syntax errors etc. are totally the 
fault of Siri. I take no responsibility for any of this…



Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:10 AM, Carol Agate <carolagate [at] me.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> These are good points about the limits of how much care younger neighbors can 
> provide for older ones who need assistance. One solution is senior cohousing 
> in which a studio unit is set aside for a caretaker whose services (and 
> salary) can be shared for those who need help with bathing, medications, or 
> other less than full-time help.
> 
> Carol Agate
> Cornerstone 
> Cambridge, MA 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 7:44 AM, R Philip Dowds <rpdowds [at] comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Excellent and realistic points from Ann.  From my experience as an eldercare 
>> architect (designer of nursing homes, assisted living, retirement housing, 
>> etc.), I’ll add some amplifications.
>> 
>> . . .
>> 
>> Like assisted living, cohousing can help bridge the gap between independence 
>> and custodial care.  And probably at a considerably lower cost.  But we 
>> cohousers need to stay realistic about what we can and can’t do (or don’t 
>> want to do) for our friends and neighbors.  Do I really want to assist my 
>> neighbor across the hall with ADLs = Activities of Daily Living: bathing, 
>> dressing / grooming, feeding and toileting?  Or, do all his/her grocery 
>> shopping … even as I myself am having more trouble finding my car keys?  I’m 
>> 71.  Am I expecting my neighbor to do these things for me?
>>    I think most of us would agree that direct care with ADLs is probably 
>> mostly beyond the social contract, implicit or explicit, of cohousing.  
>> Grocery shopping and meal prep for a neighbor is very much within our scope. 
>>  For a while.  But three meals a day, month after month?
>> 
>> Finally, we need to stay realistic about how much help old people can give 
>> to old people.  If an 80-year-old’s television or computer screen goes dark, 
>> or door sticks shut, chances are greater that it can be re-activated by a 
>> 40-year-old than by another 80-year-old.  If supporting elderly neighbors is 
>> part of our mission, then there is much to be said for multi-generational 
>> communities.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Philip Dowds
>> Cornerstone Village Cohousing
>> Cambridge, MA
> 
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