30 August
2013
A
Creative Solution to Retirement Homes:
Virtual
Retirement Communities Have Become A Reality in Cities Around the World
Brought to you by Liberty Mutual’s
The Responsibility Project
One evening in 2006, Ruth Sullivan
McElheny and husband Victor McElheny of Cambridge, Mass., hosted a dinner
party. Soon conversation turned to retirement homes and what their guests
thought of them. "Some people wanted to stay in their homes, others the
husband wanted to stay and the wife wanted to go to a retirement home, or vice
versa," recalls Ruth, now 77, a former corporate communications manager
for Polaroid.
Ruth and Victor had visited a
nearby retirement home the year before, but they weren't sure it was right for
them. The couple felt it would be ideal if they could grow older together in
their Cambridge home.
A few months later the Cambridge
senior center brought in a speaker from a Boston organization that had created
a virtual retirement community, allowing people to age in place. The McElhenys
and about 150 others attended--including many of the people who had been at
their dinner party.
There was such enthusiasm for this
virtual retirement-home concept that the couple got together with a dozen of
their friends and, in 2007, created Cambridge at
Home. Despite its name, Cambridge at
Home, which now has more than 200 members, is open to anyone over 50 who lives
in Cambridge as well as nearby towns of Belmont, Arlington, Somerville and Watertown.
As it turns out, Cambridge at Home
grew out of movement that began just across the Charles River in Boston. And
Judy Willett, now the executive director of the Village-to-Village Network, was
the speaker from that Cambridge event.
According to Willett, the idea for
the first virtual retirement village originated when a couple in their 60s
returned from a night out to discover water pouring through the roof of their
home in the Beacon Hill section of Boston. The husband decided to tie a rope
around his waist, hand the loose end to his wife and climb out of the
second-story window to break up the ice dam that had formed on the roof and was
causing the flood. As his wife held onto the rope for dear life, she imagined
that there must be a better way to grow older in your own home.
Soon thereafter, the couple began
polling their friends and neighbors to find out what they thought about the
notion of creating their own virtual retirement community, one that provided
the services of a traditional retirement home but that also allowed them to
stay in the very same houses and apartments where they'd lived for years.
In 2002, they founded Beacon Hill
Village. It became the harbinger of the virtual retirement community movement,
offering its residents handyman assistance whenever they needed it, a
ride-sharing system for trips to the dentist, doctor or dog groomer, and a
social network for enjoying the cultural riches that Boston had to offer – all
of this for an annual membership fee. Beacon Hill Village,
which organized itself as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, hired Willett as executive
director to run the day-to-day operations.
In 2006, The New York
Times profiled Beacon Hill Village and its virtual retirement
concept. Suddenly, Willett was answering thousands of phone calls from people
around the world who wanted to know how they could replicate Beacon Hill
Village.
Not long afterwards, with Beacon
Hill Village's blessing, Willett created the Village-to-Village Network (VTV),
which has become the go-to resource for information on virtual retirement
communities. Currently, there are 115 virtual retirement villages--including
three internationally (Australia, Canada and The Netherlands)--and 125 more in
development. Most "villages" encompass a single town or a handful of
neighborhoods in a certain location, such as the Lincoln Park Village in
Chicago and the Athens Area Village in Georgia.
Demographics help to explain the
growing popularity of virtual retirement villages. The latest census data shows
40 million Americans over age 65. "When you ask those age 60 and older
about their future," says Willett, "ninety percent say they want to
stay in their homes the rest of their lives, and [a village] is a wonderful,
commonsense way to do that."
Victor McElheny, 77, concurs.
"We've lived in our present home for 31 years. You've repaired it, you've
renovated it, you've brought your children up there," he says. "You
have a support system that existed before you were 65--your doctor, lawyer, and
accountant are all relatively nearby. Everything is familiar."
Victor, a writer and former science
journalist at MIT, also says that his generation "doesn't want to be a
burden to family, and we don't want to be pushed around by relatives. You are
looking for independence, and having your own home is enormously tied up in
that."
Despite the fierce sense of
independence, people who join a virtual retirement village understand that at
some point they are going to need help or have to ask for it. That's why a ride
somewhere and help with handyman services are the most popular requests that
villages get from their members.
One of the first services that
Irene Marcos used after joining Ashby Village in Berkeley, Calif. in 2010 was a
ride. At age 69 she is a relatively young village resident. (The average age of
village residents nationwide is 75, according to VTV.) "I'd had a dental
procedure done, and I couldn't drive home or take public transit," recalls
Marcos, a retired executive with the Levi-Strauss Company. "So a volunteer
came and picked me up."
That ride was a free benefit of the
dues that Marcos pays each year--$750 as a single; a couple pays $1,200. She
also asked to have a handyman come by to change light bulbs. "I didn't think
it was a good idea, at my age for me to be going up on a ladder," she
explains.
Many village residents value the
social aspect of membership. Part of the Cambridge at Home annual fee goes
toward organizing outings for its members, from thrice-weekly fitness classes
in Cambridge to private tours of museums and libraries in Boston.
For Marcos, being a part of Ashby
Village allows her to continue participating in community service, something
she has enjoyed her entire adult life. Currently, she chairs Ashby Village's
volunteer committee. Marcos is responsible for recruiting, training and
retaining volunteers. She also gets to flex her creative muscle as a volunteer
herself, coming up with solutions to member requests.
"We have a member who sang in
a chorus on Thursday evenings, but her husband had developed dementia and she
couldn't leave him alone," Marcos recalls. In addition, the husband wanted
to write his memoirs before it was too late, so Marcos needed to find someone
who could spend time with the husband so the wife could go to chorus, but who
could also help him write his life story. "We found a young woman, an
attorney, who is one of our volunteers, and she was with him every Thursday
evening and helped him write his memoirs while his wife went and sang her heart
out. It was great to be able to put that together."
Since joining Ashby Village, Marcos
has become closer to her Berkeley neighbors, something she couldn't do before
as her job kept on the road nearly all the time. "I've made some really
good new friends that I value tremendously," she adds. Plus, she never has
to go up on a ladder again to change a light bulb.
Leah Ingram is the author of 14
non-fiction books, including "Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and
Healthier for Less." That book grew out of her popular frugal-living blog
called Suddenly Frugal.