Age In Place—On Campus.
By Karen and Erica
Did you love being in college? But maybe not the tests and the homework? Or your dorm room, a smelly mess, or your roommate, annoying?
Good news! You can have a mulligan! This time, everything will be perfect! Live the high life, on campus.
The New York Times recently had an entire section devoted to living options for people who are getting older. Find NYT Sections—Senior Living—to see the entire list of articles. (We dislike the term senior but of course living is good.)
The possibilities are quite interesting. They include a renovated mortuary; an elegant penthouse; a multi-generation family home; a compact apartment with a Hudson River view; a DIY conversion; communities created around specific interests, like horses, or pottery, or fancy cars; and more—at all price points. The online version also has a quiz to help you analyze your later-life living choices.
We found one possibility really intriguing–an elegant apartment in a high rise, with all kinds of amenities, including support systems for various levels of need—on campus. Actually embedded within the college environment.
Traditional senior living communities (some known as Life Plan Communities or continuing care retirement communities – CCRCs), offer senior housing services, maintenance-free living and a full continuum of care, which is similar to the residential and health services offered by university retirement communities. The emphasis on lifelong learning and the proximity to a college or university campus is really what sets university-based retirement communities apart from other communities. Other senior living communities have lifelong learning programs with opportunities for residents to take online classes or travel to the nearest college campus for in-person courses. This is valuable, but it’s not the same as having an affiliation with a college or university and being part of the campus community.
Seems like a win-win–for us and for educational institutions.
Apparently, Boomers, especially, find campus life appealing.
University retirement communities appeal to the baby boomer generation, people born between 1946 and 1964, because it is not only one of the most well-educated, but the most social, [Andrew Carle, an adjunct lecturer on aging and health issues at Georgetown University] said. It also helps that boomers — who make up approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population — control more than half the nation’s wealth.
And the financial benefits for the institutions can be significant.
Indeed, one of the biggest advantages to a university of having a retirement community on or near its campus is financial, Mr. Carle said, citing revenue from land leases, name and licensing rights, contract services like medical staff and shared services like food, maintenance, security and transportation.
At a “highly integrated” university retirement community, he said, these benefits can exceed $2 million per year, often for land or space that was not otherwise being used.
The particular place described in the New York Times article is a community called Mirabella, located on the campus of Arizona State Community, near Tempe. (We’ve never been there but it looks beautiful!) Older people love the living options, the access to education, and engaging with younger people. Younger people love access to older people—for all kinds of reasons, including just to talk. It all sounds rather wonderful. As Mirabella puts it:
When you live right on campus, you get to enjoy that student-of-life thing in all its glory. You’re in the heart of the action, which means you get all the perks that come with it. You might feel like you’re in college again – but with less homework and less housework. We take care of the monotonous tasks of life – so you can live.
Intergenerational living is to be treasured, as is life long learning. To combine both is brilliant. And apparently, there are quite a few such on-campus sites.
Since the 1990s, at least 86 of these communities have opened across the country, including the Village at Penn State in State College, Penn.; University Commons at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Vi at Palo Alto at Stanford University in California. There has been a particular boom in the last 15 years, said Andrew Carle, an adjunct lecturer on aging and health issues at Georgetown University, who developed a website to track them.
“Some of us are looking at 20, 30 more years,” said Mr. Carle, 66. “So we want to do something other than just play another round of golf.”
I am familiar with the Mirabella facility as my daughter recently graduated from ASU. It is a beautiful facility but definitely for the more financially upscale new “student”. There have also been some co-existence growing pains with residents of the Mirabella complaining about noise from clubs in the area. I love the idea though, and definitely will be considering such an option when I get there.