Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Aging out

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Aug 31, 2026, at 11:10 AM, Philip Dowds via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> Much depends on the nature and details of the age-related decline.  Helping 
> with meal trains and final days for a few weeks is apparently done by many 
> communities.  But for intensive medical care, including med management, 
> toilet transfers, infusions, etc?  Or general incapacitating frailty lasting 
> months or years?  Most cohousing is not set up or trained for this.
> 
> Our 21st-century problem is that modern medicine can keep us alive for much 
> longer than it can keep us healthy.

Cohousing is wonderful and people do develop more relationships with other 
members than one does in most neighborhoods, but they are not unlike those 
developed in neighborhoods where families have lived for a long time, have 
children in the same schools, grew up in the same neighborhood, share a 
religion, etc.

As Philip said, there is no financial structure to support medical care.

What you can expect comes from your own ability to develop relationships, 
ability to ask for what you need, ability to find resources outside the 
community, etc. Some people develop very close, supportive relationships, that 
result in daily supports. But others have friends to the same extent they would 
have in any neighborhood.

What can make things different is that you have the opportunity to know people 
in many different ways — community meals, raising children, group purchases, 
joint gardening and sharing vegetables, sharing childcare, particularly 
emergency child care, sharing tools or appliances, etc. The common 
communications system — the email list — is a great facilitator of cross 
pollination of support. A request can receive a response in minutes (I have 
many examples of this). And that everyone knows everyone else — some you might 
barely know at all and others are like siblings.

Some non-cohousing neighborhoods have developed similar relationships and 
communications ties. Takoma Park, MD has many group lists that are limited to 
residents of a specific block of a specific street. Everyone on that list lives 
on one side or the other of the block. They have often built the same 
relationships.

My point is that cohousing relationships can be exceptional because of the 
intention to be good neighbors, the physical closeness, the many meetings and 
sharing of community tasks and celebrations. But there is no built in structure 
that promises the same kind of continuing health care that large senior 
communities might. There is no staff. Everyone is just as busy as your 
non-cohousing neighbors are. 

At Takoma Village, we had from the beginning two residents with serious 
physical challenges but both were also very good at establishing supportive 
friendships and health care support outside the community — public resources. 
There were many (several?) instances of cancer treatment and death, children 
with various challenges, frequent unemployment, etc. So we had all the 
challenges any neighborhood would have and we dealt with them by offering more 
support for all the reasons I cite above, but I’ve also seen such relationships 
in religious communities and stable, multigenerational neighborhoods.

I would like to hear more from senior cohousing communities and what they have 
been able to accomplish, but I would also say from having been in a community 
from before development until 25 years later, that cohousers like any group 
change as the people change and as the economy or the next pandemic changes 
things. Facilities and relationships promised or hoped for during development 
might never actually develop. 

It was surprising how much people changed after move in. In couples, for 
example, one person might be totally uninvolved before move-in. I was 
apprehensive about whether the active member would be able to convince the 
other to actually move-in. And after move-in the participation would completely 
switch. People change.

Cohousing is a moving target in terms of providing what you might be looking 
for at any given time. Your best chance is to be involved in developing a 
community to ensure that the features that are important to you are more likely 
to be accomplished.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD
Founding member and 25 year resident in Takoma Village, Washington DC