Assisted Living Evolution Marked by Great Recession’s Impact – Senior Housing News.
This article confirms what I had suspected, that the recession had changed things. I find that more and more people want to age in place in their present homes rather than relocate to independent senior living residences. My husband’s parents, who were born in 1905, happily moved into a senior living campus when they were in their mid-eighties. They expected to advance through the full range of services offered such as assisted living and,perhaps, skilled nursing or dementia care housing if needed. Instead, they remained in their initial apartment. After my father-in-law died at the age of 94, the establishment assumed my mother-in-law would want to move to assisted living, but whenever she was taken there to view available apartments, we could read in her face the dread she had of moving there. So, she lived on in her original apartment, receiving ’round the clock care-giving, until she died at the age of 100. Fortunately she had the means to do so. My husband and I do not. The economy has changed drastically, but even more so is the difference in outlook between our parents’ time and our own. Our generation has some of that baby-boomer energy about it and we still want to “do our own thing”.