Suzanne's Mom's Blog

As my friends and I discuss whether or not to sign up for senior communities, one big worry is not seeing children very often. Not necessarily just children in our own families, but the kids that are in the neighborhood or that we pass on our walks or our trips to the the library and shops. Many of us don’t want to be somewhere with no sidewalks to a town, where you can feel a bit normal.

Eleanor Laise at MarketWatch recently reported on a trend that aims to deal with that issue.

She writes, “It’s a warm spring Monday in Easthampton, Mass., and from the front porch of her townhome in the Treehouse intergenerational community, Sue Brow can see several neighbors’ well-kept gardens in bloom. Brow, 60, has helped plant the garden of one neighbor who was ill, and she’s pitching in to grow tomatoes on another neighbor’s patio. Later in the afternoon, residents gather to play games in a communal building. Brow’s 16-year-old son helps take out the older neighbors’ trash, and in their living room sits a birdhouse he just painted at a community celebration attended by residents and friends ranging in age from three to 83. 

“In her four years living at Treehouse, a community designed to bring together seniors with families who are fostering or adopting children, Brow … raised her adopted son with the help of dozens of fellow residents who live within a few minutes’ walk along the horseshoe-shaped street that forms the neighborhood’s backbone. ‘I don’t know what I would have done’ without that [says] Brow. …

“As America enters an era of unprecedented age diversity, new designs for intergenerational communities are taking shape across the country, intentionally weaving together the lives of older and younger residents and breaking down barriers that have segregated elders in traditional senior housing.

“In these new communities, octogenarians can help 8-year-olds with their math homework after school, residents of all ages can prepare and eat meals together, and neighbors can take turns caring for a sick resident who might otherwise wind up in a nursing home. 

“[The] communities often feature smaller, age-friendly dwellings tightly clustered around shared green spaces. Many include community gardens and common buildings where older and younger residents can work and play side by side.

“The trend is not so much a new idea as the resurrection of a very old one. ‘Multiple generations living close by and looking out for each other is possibly the oldest of all human ideas,’ says Dr. Bill Thomas, a geriatrician who last year announced the launch of new, intergenerational Kallimos Communities. …

“In addition to Kallimos, which plans to open its first community in Loveland, Colo., next year, other intergenerational communities in the works include Regenerative Communities, spearheaded by hospitality entrepreneur Chip Conley; Agrihood, designed around an urban farm in Santa Clara, Calif.; and 4300 San Pablo, an Emeryville, Calif., community designed for seniors and young adults who are aging out of the foster care system. …

“These communities are springing up at a time when COVID-19 has spotlighted the pivotal role they can play in society, aging experts say. During the pandemic, it was ‘truly heartbreaking and horrifying how all these ways we’ve separated people — including by age — left us ill-prepared to deal with a crisis of this magnitude,’ says Marc Freedman, president and CEO of Encore.org, a nonprofit focused on intergenerational connection. 

“Isolation proved devastating not only for seniors in locked-down facilities but also younger people stuck taking Zoom classes in their bedrooms, says Bob Kramer, cofounder and strategic adviser for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care. Now, when he teaches college students about the impact of isolation, he says, ‘for the first time, 22-year-olds I’m speaking to can empathize with what I’m talking about.’ …  

“Intergenerational communities reflect efforts ‘not just to remake housing but to reinvent the notion of what a family is,’ Freedman says. Those efforts come as the U.S. reaches a new milestone in age diversity, with the population roughly evenly distributed across chronological ages through the mid-70s, according to a recent study from the Stanford Center on Longevity. … ‘The demography of America is changing faster than the financiers and developers of housing are willing to change,’ Thomas says. Housing that was developed for a much younger population, he says, is ‘increasingly out of sync with who we really are.’ “

More at MarketWatch, here. No firewall.