Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: co-care agreements?

[Cohousing (cohousing]

Do you know the cost of assisted living? Do you know the cost of “independent 
senior living?” It is sky high and most seniors cannot afford unless they have 
really good LTC policies which are rare. And even if you can afford $3000+ per 
month studio apartment with room and board, more for any kind of assistance, 
finding a good quality facility is not easy. We are the generation that LTC was 
not even available to us. Medicare does not cover this. Medicaid helps only 
after we have exhausted all but $2000 in assets and only if we live in a place 
that will even accept Medicaid. (God only knows what is going to happen to this 
government controlled assistance these days.) 

Elders can serve the community in many ways as long as they are mentally sharp. 
Grandparenting is one way. Eldering: being sources of wisdom and nuturing is 
another way. Reading stories to children. Teaching what they are skilled in. 
Just because elders don’t move fast on their feet, does not mean they are not 
able to contribute aspects of living long honored by cultures and generations 
past. Those with dementia can stay as long as they have a partner to supervise 
them and then they need to move to a place that can provide more protective 
care like a memory care place—unfortunately. Cohousing residents cannot be 
expected to provide constant supervision to any adult. 

The whole impetus for my husband Dave and I to form Raleigh Cohousing (senior) 
is so that we can avoid assisted living and nursing homes for as long as we can 
and hopefully our whole lifetime. We are in our 70s. We have waited too late to 
get started but we are doing this anyway. We have been through the aging to 
death process with our parents in the independent living to assisted living to 
nursing homes and we are NOT willing to go that route. We feel that cohousing 
is the best solution out there. Our community will have a range of ages from 
the 40s on up—because we can’t all turn 92 at the same time. We are not focused 
on raising children at this point in our lives although we are not against 
multigenerational communities, we just don’t think young families will be 
attracted to our community nor do we know how to  market to them. The best of 
both worlds would be to have two communities adjacent—one multigenerational and 
one senior. 

Kayelily
Raleigh-cohousing.com <http://raleigh-cohousing.com/> 




> On Jan 27, 2017, at 1:35 AM, Beverly Jones Redekop <beverly.jones.redekop 
> [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> As a parent of children ages 4, 9, and 12, my preference is to have
> neighbours of all ages. It seems sad to consider leaving when you think you
> can't do your share after years of doing your share when you could.
> 
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 3:48 PM Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> This topic is bringing up an unresolved issue for me about the goal of
>> helping cohousers age in place. Does it make sense to plan on staying
>> longer in your home, with whatever kind of assistance, past the point when
>> you can "do" cohousing except in a social sense, receiving visits and
>> perhaps getting some kinds of assistance from your neighbors that you can't
>> reciprocate? How many such residents can a community sustain?
>> 
>> I'm thinking about the very nice local senior living/ assisted living
>> community to which several of our older members have moved in recent years.
>> 
>> As pleasant as it may be to live there without all the responsibilities for
>> maintaining one's house and the common spaces and the governance that
>> cohousing entails, I think those of us who are getting older (yes, everyone
>> is, but some of us have been at it longer) want to postpone that move and
>> stay in our wonderful cohousing community as long as possible because of
>> the human capital we have here. We want to remain in the presence of
>> energetic younger folks and children and not live surrounded only by the
>> old and the very old.
>> 
>> But is it fair to our cohousing neighbors if we can't contribute to
>> maintenance and governance? Or should that even be a consideration? I
>> wonder about balancing all of this.
>>   Muriel at Shadowlake Village
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>> 
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