By Jack Cumming

These tales of quest are based on true stories, fictionalized to prevent finger-pointing. Individuals’ names, too, have been changed to protect the privacy of the innocents. Two of the three are planners. We’ll call them Sam Campbell and Sarah Turkevich. The third is one of those serendipitous souls who drift through life smiling and being nice. Her name for our story is Sabrina Schall.

Sam’s Story

We’ll start with Sam, whose journey through aging is most like that of Odysseus in the Homeric epic. Sam began as a New Yorker. His career was as an electrical engineer. When he retired, he and his wife moved to Mary’s Woods, a Catholic CCRC, in Lake Oswego, OR. Although Mary’s Woods had an upside-down balance sheet, Sam was long a defender of the management. He loved living there.

That all changed when a new CEO and executive director decided both to expand, thereby increasing the balance sheet fragility, and to close the skilled nursing unit, which Sam thought was essential to the continuum of care commitment. Sam felt betrayed. Of course, he was only a resident and so had no say.

Sam and his wife moved out to a nearby apartment of their own. That became their base as they looked for something that offered what they thought they had had at Mary’s Woods. They had visited San Diego and liked the climate and the healthcare available there. They never again wanted the resident risk that comes with an entrance fee. They took a big loss in leaving the CCRC where they had lived.

In San Diego, they moved first to Casa de Mañana Retirement Community on the beach in La Jolla. It was a distance to healthcare. Road access to and from La Jolla was difficult. There was also heavy tourism and other aspects that they found to be drawbacks. They moved from Casa Mañana to nearby Belmont Village, which was easier to access and more convenient to healthcare, but traffic, price, and other factors led them to keep looking.

Most recently, Sam and his wife have been living at La Vida del Mar, an assisted living community about half a mile from the beach. Along the way, Sam has given up on not-for-profit businesses, and Senior Resource Group, Inc., a privately held company, owns the community where he has settled (for now).

Sarah’s Story

Sarah came to the United States from Romania, where life was regimented under a nominally communist regime. She is cautious, and her probing questions can irritate marketing people who are not used to her level of inquiry. Some people interpret intense questioning as hostile instead of the focused interest that it represents. Sarah would like the seeming sanctuary of a CCRC but has been unable to find any that come close to that ideal in an area where she would like to live.

When pressed, she affirms that she and her husband are happy where they live and would like to stay put until they can no longer provide for themselves. She seems to fear that that time might come without their being able to make the needed decisions. She may fear ending up in a substandard end-of-life living situation. She is on the waiting list for several CCRCs. Her hope appears to be that moving to a CCRC before care is needed could protect her when the time comes that she does need care.

In the meantime, Sarah has become active with the Village Movement. She is a volunteer for Viva Village in Portland, OR. That and other activities seem to meet her needs for a social life, and it’s evident that her deep-dive probing of senior living options has given purpose to her life. It’s not clear if she is active in her local senior center, but senior centers meet many of the social needs of stay-at-home agers. Others find socialization in churches or elsewhere.

Sabrina’s Story

That brings us to Sabrina, who is more like what many providers imagine their residents to be. Sabrina is a kind, caring person who has a smile and a good word for everyone. She thinks the best of management and assumes that they are doing what they have to do, even when it may seem to be contrary to anything that residents might choose for themselves.

Many years ago, she worked in marketing for a senior community. It wasn’t a CCRC, though it had been at one time. After bankruptcy, the courts ruled that it could not charge an entrance fee, and that constraint has persisted to this day. Sabrina loved those residents of long ago with whom she worked.

After moving into the CCRC, where she now lives, Sabrina was often lonely. It’s hard to put a finger on why that might be, but the life enrichment activities didn’t seem to fill the void. She missed her friends from where she lived previously to moving in. She didn’t complain, but she would tell people that her children placed her in the CCRC. She went along with it, but it wasn’t her preference. She would have preferred to stay among her friends.

That changed when a man in his 90s became a widower. He soon took an interest in Sabrina, and they became fast friends, going to dinner and events together. She insists they’re no more than good friends, but who cares? If she didn’t share that insight, no one would think anything. After all, it’s 2025, not 1955.

Sabrina is a little idiosyncratic. She cares greatly about what people think of her. She likes to let her cat sit in the hallway outside her apartment to have a window on the wider world. She ponders how her CCRC living now differs from her early sales experience elsewhere. “Here,” she notes, “the residents die. There,” she adds, “residents left when they needed care beyond independence.” She quickly muses, “Recently, they’ve added memory care there.”

Reflections

No two individuals are the same. We all like to be recognized and respected for those qualities that make us unique. Thus, the onus on senior living, with its greater intensity of relationship than that at a senior center, is to recognize each resident as an individual with varying capabilities, interests, and needs. That is much easier to achieve at the independent local community level than in a large overweening corporate entity.

Perhaps, Sarah, with her amazing analytical values, is trending in the best direction. What seems most suitable is for seniors as they age to stay put as long as they can, but to know of a standby assisted living or board and care facility to which they would want to move if needed.

Then, they need to let someone know of that intent in case they cannot fend for themselves when the time comes. Assisted living and related care homes might be wise to offer a contingent move-in contract that could spring automatically into force when a trigger condition presents itself. Then, Sarah could stay put with the same degree of comfort that the standby care commitment of a CCRC might otherwise provide. Freedom of self-determination can be an elixir for vitality through old age.

Disclaimer: These are my observations and not a testimony by those profiled. There is so much opportunity in senior living if the industry creatively develops responses tailored to the needs of those served, combined with a business model that is commensurate with the value provided. As a resident, my perspective differs from that of those who see opportunity in capital-intensive expansion, financing, and development pursuits.