There's more than 100 established cohousing neighborhoods in the U.S. and even more than that under development. There's quite a few in Oregon (including an EcoVillage out near Portland airport and another in Corvallis), and others down the road in Ashland and Bend. The Northwest Intentional Communities Association (NICA) helps communities in the region start and grow.

Back to the "independent-living" facility covered in the linked article in the blog entry above, though: I wonder, despite all the lovely language about the open-style kitchen with entertainment provided by chefs (for how many thousands of dollars per month?), how much the residents really are in charge, as opposed to the management, when push comes to shove. In senior cohousing, the resident-owners individually and collectively hire (and share) the caregivers and housekeepers, making for a very different power dynamic.

The project sounds like a natural market-driven response to the needs of aging Boomers who don't want to give up the illusions of independence and control over their lives, and the nursing-home civil rights revolution brought about over the past few decades by the Pioneer Network with folks like my friends Debby and Barry Barkan at the Live Oak Institute, who are now engaged as part of the on-the-streets Aging In Community movement, co-creating the Elders' Guild.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach and Certified Senior Cohousing Facilitator
Planning for Sustainable Communities
at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing

In East Lansing, MI there is a really exciting place that has many levels of care from fully independent condo housing all the way through to fully staffed nursing home care.  The people we know best in that facility all chose to enter it under their own power --- nobody compels them to go into it, and they had/have the means to do otherwise if they wanted to.  Their reasons differ, but one of the main shared reason was that they like living in private rooms in a larger setting that means they had no need to deal with groceries, lawn care, plumbing, snow, ice dams on the roof, raking leaves, and, most of all, loneliness.  Because they live in this facility, they can keep socializing and even hosting gatherings although they don't have to maintain a house and they aren't able to drive.

There are wonderful benefits to increasing community based care that allows people who want to remain in their homes to do so.  But what seems to be ignored is that an awful lot of people prefer not to stay in the homes that were appropriate for them when they were younger and want a way to get the amount of help they need without constantly having to hire a battalion of assistants to do all the things that they could do when they were younger.  Different strokes for different folks, as it were.  

The 5% Project

seniorhousing.com


occassia-- Singer Creek Canyon, Willamette Valley, Pacific Plate