Several efforts, both public and private, are helping assisted living become more affordable by lowering the cost of constructing assisted living facilities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has two programs that subsidize developers of affordable assisted living, allowing them to provide assisted living at a lower cost to consumers. Under the first program, the Assisted Living Conversion Program, HUD allocated $50 million per year from fiscal years 2000 to 2002 to provide grants to help owners of nonprofit low-income senior housing apartments to convert dwelling units into assisted living apartments (HUD 2001). (more…)

Developers have built and marketed assisted living primarily for middle- to upper-income older persons—those able to pay $2,000 a month or more—a cost prohibitive for many older persons. According to a survey of 300 assisted living facilities in 1998, only 20% of facilities charged a single rate. The other 80% charged varying rates, depending upon room sizes or apartments or for assistance beyond the facility’s standard package of services. Most of the basic monthly rates ranged between $1,100 and $2,900 per month (Hawes, Phillips, and Rose 2000). Only 7% of the residents surveyed by the National Investment Center (NIC) and the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) (1998) received public assistance for services (provided through Medicaid), and only 9% received public assistance for shelter costs (provided through the federal Supplemental Security Income program). (more…)

While assisted living is similar to home care, congregate housing, board and care homes, and nursing homes, it differs from those programs in significant ways.

Home Care.

The minimum time block for which home care usually can be scheduled is two hours. While this is ideal for help with dressing, bathing, housekeeping, and meal preparation, two-hour time blocks are inappropriate when assistance needs to be available throughout the day and evening. (more…)

In better facilities, the design of the building reflects the philosophy of promoting independence. Residents usually live either in private rooms with baths, individual temperature controls, and doors that lock or in small apartments with kitchenettes. They often bring their own furniture. The decor and scale are homelike throughout the building, often with one or more small sitting rooms that encourage residents to visit with each other and entertain guests. Many assisted living home facilities explicitly avoid fluorescent lighting, long corridors, tile floors, and the nursing stations that are associated with nursing homes residents. (more…)

Changes in the Family

Every human being has the need for affection and to have someone toward whom he can express love and affection. Family and friends supply this need. Here, too, changes take place as people grow older. Already noted is the fact that women have to take into account the time when all of the children have left home. Men retire and lose some of their old friends. Other friends of the older couple move away. The later years also present the possibility of the death and dying of one of the marriage partners. (more…)

There are really no wrong reasons to choose an assisted living home arrangement in a senior community. With assisted living a person can still be as independent and free as they always have been, plus they also don’t have to worry about all the things that may become more difficult as times goes on. (more…)