Inspired to create a senior living community that was completely designed by residents for residents

By Steve Moran

I first saw this article in the Wall Street Journal last week and flagged it for this story. This article from the BBC is nearly identical and not behind a paywall: Students attempt to launch self-built rocket and yes . . .

IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH SENIOR LIVING.

 

The Story in Short Form

Joshua Farahzad was a bored college student who was obsessed with outer space and rockets. He had this brilliant idea to put together the first ever independent team of students to build a rocket and send it into outer space.

It is not that students have never done this before. There are a handful of universities that have done this in a very organized, programmed fashion and that successfully launched rockets. But this has always been done with a strong guiding hand of university professionals.

Joshua emailed a bunch of other students who belonged to rocketry clubs and invited them to be a part of the adventure and a bunch said yes. It was a crazy, insane adventure with lots of missteps and problems. It probably shouldn’t have worked but, ultimately, it all came together and they recently successfully launched their missile from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The rocket did not quite reach outer space (62 miles) but it worked, including the ignition of the 2nd stage, which is the really hard part.

 

Thinking About Senior Living

Reading this story got me to wondering what would happen if some creative resident like say our own Jack Cumming . . . hint, hint . . . got inspired to create a senior living community that was completely designed by residents for residents.

You are thinking, “wait a minute we are already talking to residents”, yep no question that is true and, no question, it makes communities better. But we all have biases that inform what we do and this is true for senior living developers and operators.

I find myself thinking that if a group of residents got together to build something, which would include figuring out financing and how to run it, the result could be pretty amazing, though I am sure not perfect. They would figure out the location, the size, the design, and how the program would work.

For sure they would have constraints. The cost of development would need to be sustainable, as is true of the operating costs.

In some sense, this is co-op thinking, but I think differently.

 

What do you think?  Good idea or would they just, more or less, come up with what we already have?

Love to hear your thoughts!