Pamela A. MacLean
RedwoodAge.com
The desire to keep living at home as we age has spawned a movement known as the "senior village" in which volunteers - from Boston's Beacon Hill to Northern California's Marin County - provide mutual support for elders living at home.
The "villages" aren't places, but grassroots membership groups that hook up neighbors and local volunteers. They help to link people to community services, coordinate social events, provide transportation to doctors or shopping, and vet fix-it services or contractors. More than 60 such groups have sprung up nationwide.
"We are trying to supplement other services, not take over what others are already doing," said Sharon Seymour, an organizer of a new village in Sausalito in Marin County.
Marin, the grayest county in California and the home of RedwoodAge.com, launched its senior village earlier this year to act as an umbrella for smaller, local versions throughout the country. More than 80 people crowded an organizational meeting in Sausalito March 23 for the start of its own senior village.
The picturesque town of Sausalito, with steep hills and twisting narrow streets at the rim of San Francisco Bay, presents a challenge for any driver. But it can be particularly daunting as people age and can't hike the hilly streets with groceries or drive to appointments. Residents are looking for ways to extend the time they live in their homes, even as they age in a challenging environment.
The village movement is a riff on Hillary Clinton's 1990s notion that "it takes a village" to raise a child. In this case, the concept is that it takes a village to allow elders to grow old at home. And villages have sprung up like mushrooms, starting in Boston's Beacon Hill, Seattle, Denver, District of Columbia, San Francisco and now Marin County.
Not For Me
Jackie Kudler, a village supporter in Sausalito, said she spent 15 years
visiting her widowed mother-in-law in an assisted living community that fit her
mother-in-laws needs and made her happy but was not for Kudler or her husband.
"We were convinced it would never work for us," she said. "I put great value on my privacy and the kind of groupie aspect of it was a major turn-off for me."
Kudler and many others in the meeting echoed the notion that they would rather live at home as they age and just get a little help from a network of friends and neighbors. That's the object of the senior village phenomenon.
This is an alternative to living in gated communities, retirement homes, assisted living facilities or relying on adult children from care, according to Lee Follett, a 21-year resident of Sausalito and village board member.
To be sure, there are other concepts for aging in place that are catching on with different groups. Senior cohousing, for example, lets group of elders live together in communities where they can support one another's needs. And many towns sponsor living in place programs that serve as a nexus for putting individuals in touch with public and private services; some even offer elder daycare or other services.
There's a Cost
The village process isn't free. The Marin group plans to charge $200 per
household for an annual membership in any of the local villages. In Beacon Hill
the cost is $850 per household and in Seattle $350 annually.
"You've got to charge," said Carolyn Rosenblatt, a expert on age-related law and medical care in nearly San Rafael, Calif., who counsels families about the costs of aging in place and runs the Senior Resource Forum in Marin.
"These are disparate groups who are not aware of all the resources they may need and they may not know how to access them. Home health care services are popping up all over and to keep abreast of it takes a lot of energy and effort," said Rosenblatt, author of "The Boomers' Guide to Aging Parents."
Research around the country has shown that most people say they want to live in their own home as they age. "But how do they do that?," asked Rosenblatt, who is also a lawyer and registered nurse. "Most people are in some degree of denial about how it will be to age. We don't have a model for what it's like to live in our 80s and 90s, yet the fastest growing age group now is centenarians."
The Marin senior village is working to get tax exempt status to allow it to accept tax deductible donations and act as an umbrella for local senior villages, handling administrative functions, accounting and management for the volunteer groups. They will collect 15 percent of the donations to the individual senior villages set up in Marin to pay for operations. The group has a website in the works that it scheduled for launch in April.
They want to help members by organizing volunteers to do minor home repairs, gardening, walk a pet, organize transportation to doctors or shopping or to cultural events and to maintain social contacts.
