Senior housing has changed dramatically and much more is ahead. Following are 10 senior housing development trends Ecumen sees over the next decade:
1. Energy Efficient Design: Energy efficient and environmentally responsible design and development are becoming increasingly important to the senior housing market. LEED Certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a wonderful designation, but not everyone can afford to achieve that. But buildings don’t have to be LEED Certified to include sustainable features.
2. Universal Design: Homes with Universal design look like other homes; they're just much easier to use, especially as residents’ physical abilities change. Examples of universal design features include one-story living, wide doorways and hallways, no-slip bathroom surfaces, ample built-in lighting, lever door handles and slow-closing storm doors
3. Technology, Technology, Technology: The next generation of seniors will be the most wired in history. Technology is essential to their life and will be integral to design to support social connections, ease and wellness. Look for today’s sensor technology, which helps identify small health issues before they grow larger, to move into even more interactive applications that connect people to family members and health care professionals.
4. Age of Amenities: Make no mistake, life is in the details. No one seems to become less particular as they age. Flexibility with regard to individual amenities is important to anyone making housing arrangements, and it should be equally important to senior housing developers. Whether a la carte, bundled or marketed as care and service tiers - all will need to be itemized and transparent as to what, exactly, one can expect for their retirement dollar. Love the cookies, but the cookie-cutter approach is so last century.
5. At-home services: Not everyone wants to live in senior housing. Senior housing providers that flourish will develop service strategies that extend outside of their bricks and mortar to serve people who want to remain in their own homes. Senior housing providers who don't embrace possibilities for being a "go-to" source on aging gracefully [http://www.ecumen.org/aging-resources/2-tips-for-aging-well/], wellness and living fully, will be at a disadvantage.
6. NORCs and Virtual Villages: NORCs (naturally occurring retirement communities) develop where communities have a population of neighbors who age as a cohort, whether in an apartment building, a single block or neighborhood. These also can be multigenerational. Aging in place means more independent senior living and not having to move to access services and products to meet your needs. It is possible for aging neighbors to band together and develop, or find help to develop, a variety of services from home repair to education to health care, thereby retaining the highest quality of life for all residents as they age. For example, Ecumen, a senior housing provider and developer, recently worked with a community in Minneapolis to create Mill City Commons [www.millcitycommons.org].
7. Continuing Care Retirement Communities
Sometimes called "life care retirement communities," many CCRCs guarantee lifetime housing and care with long-term agreements about the obligations of the CCRC as well as its costs. Usually expensive, with entrance fees and monthly payments, residents might own or rent their space, depending on the CCRC arrangements. CCRCs can successfully mingle active adults, as well as those with serious physical and mental disabilities, in a campus-like community. As their needs change, residents move from one type of housing to another, all within the same campus system. For many people, a CCRC becomes a long-term care insurance policy.
8. Empowerment
Senior housing providers that do best will empower residents. People make their own choices their entire adult life - why should that change when one reaches "senior" status? The senior housing profession will see more customer-experience tools where customers outline their expectations about how they want to live. Looking to more fully empower its customers, Ecumen created what they call a "lifestyle covenant," where customers reflect and share what's most important to them in how they live their life. Ecumen employees then use that insight to forge a "covenant" with the customer to outline how they're both going to support the desired lifestyle. The partnership agreement is signed by the customer and the employees that will be working with him or her.
9. Memory care
According to the Alzheimer's Association there are nearly a half million new cases of Alzheimer's each year. By 2050, that number will double to nearly a million new cases per year. It would be wonderful to be able to eliminate all memory care [http://www.ecumen.org/aging-resources/10-choosing-a-memory-care-community/] housing because that means there is an Alzheimer's cure. Until then, communities need to provide empowering housing and services that will allow people to live as fully as possible with this devastating disease.
10. New ways of Financing
The days of low equity or 100 percent debt financing for new senior housing construction are gone for the foreseeable future. Certain former "go-to" governmental programs have recently been tightening their underwriting criteria and financing from those sources has become increasingly difficult to obtain. Look for more partnerships, for-profit/non-profit joint ventures, increased use of subordinated debt and other emerging financing vehicles to enable projects to move forward in the next 10-year period.