While you or I, and thousands like us are possibly in control of making housing and home care choices for our elders, we are also internalizing this. As our parents or older friends shift in their need for advanced care of some kind, we likely ask ourselves questions such as:
Would these be choices we’d make for ourselves? Would we really want the institutionalized model of “house and home”?
Keeping in mind the continuum of experiences in the aging process, let’s step back from observing the tail end of the comet of life, where nursing and long term care homes reside and look at the sweep in the path leading up to that. There are examples where “the houses that seniors built” don’t fit the business models found in the land of “Senior’s Zen” (see blog post Jan.1)
Well as it happens there are extraordinary people stepping out in front on the design and development of housing and community living in this age of greater longevity. Maybe it’s France’s feminist Thérèse Clerc grabbing the comet tail’s fatter end! She started her senior zen movement in her mid 60’s and at age 85, last year, her vision came to reality – La Maison des Babayagas.
I’m a bit late with this news as featured on CBC’s Sunday Edition October 12, 2012 but listen to the story about Thérèse Clerc taking control of making those choices. But is social innovation around housing and community living for seniors existent only in far away France?