By Jack Cumming
Not long ago, I attended the Interface Seniors Housing West Conference, produced by France Media. With one exception, the format is a series of five- or six-person panels on topics primarily related to the financing and development of senior housing projects. Between each panel, there is a networking break, and the producer ensures that attendees are well fed and tended as they engage with each other.
ValuePLUS Roundtables
The one exception alluded to above is what Interface calls ValuePLUS Roundtables. This can be the most engaging part of the event. For this conference, there were eleven tables with topics ranging from marketing to strategy to capital raising to workforce issues. I started at a table labeled “Third Party Management” but quickly moved to an adjacent table, “Lifestyle That’s Attractive to Next Generation of Seniors” with an architectural focus. That proved to be a learning experience.
The “facilitator/architect” allowed the discussion to evolve naturally. It began with everyone introducing themselves and explaining why they were at the conference. That started as a selling round, but that didn’t last. Soon, and this was significant, it became a focus group on what the attendees would want for their parents now and for themselves when the time comes “for that.”
What Do People Want?
It’s not surprising that people working in the industry, especially those now approaching their own retirement, are thinking about the old-age residential experience to which their careers have been dedicated. Each person had very specific individual things that matter to them. For one person, that means healthy living, with healthy eating, top-flight fitness, engaging intellectual fare, and the like.
As a person who has spent many years aging in a CCRC, I couldn’t help but think that the good health emphasis may be more aspirational than realistic. Unexpected, but inevitable, health issues can detract from that vision of an energetic, vigorous dedication to longevity and health span. Still, marketing might benefit from a health zone with spa dining and much more. Usually, operators ask sales staff to sell without asking them what might be changed to make the product more attractive.
The Peter Pan Effect
The lyrics to a song in the Peter Pan musical famously declare, “If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up. Not me!” That applies as well to people on the threshold of old age. “I’ll never grow frail, never grow frail, never grow frail. Not me!”
Although people may say they are moving in to be treated with respect and care as they age, most people at move-in are still hoping that they will beat the aging realities. The hope is that they can live healthy, vital lives for as long as they can imagine. That perception is particularly important for new communities during initial fill-up.
If you want to attract younger, active people, what they want is different from what they will be happy with later as old age overtakes them. For instance, where I live, at one time we had a SwimEx and a sauna. The sauna is now a storage room, and the SwimEx is no longer in operation.
When I moved in nearly twenty years ago, early fill-up residents all spoke of how those amenities differentiated the community from others. Almost all of those early residents have now gone to green pastures, and we have a lively set of new residents. The new residents don’t miss what they never had.
How Do Visiting Family Feel?
At the Interface Conference, an interesting insight was shared by a daughter whose parents had recently decided to move into an assisted living community. Her father is in decline, but he loves now to sit in the lobby watching the world pass by. The community was chosen primarily for its proximity to the home they gave up. What sealed the deal was that they could have a view apartment and the living space they felt they needed: two bedrooms, and a bit more.
One clear takeaway is that everyone, after thinking about it, agreed with me that the age restriction that defines the “senior” in senior housing is a net negative. The daughter told of staying in the guest room at her parents’ new home and feeling out of place in a way she never had in the guest room in their former home.
Ultimate Retirement or A Home to Love
Since I was the old man at the table and a resident, my tablemates were deferential but saw themselves as decidedly different from a person born, as I was, in 1936. Remember that the initial focus was architecture. I brought up the desirability of having shared office space, perhaps for a fee, for the increasing number of prospective residents who plan to continue working.
My impression is that, for now, both the existing residents and those who market to them, view senior housing as the ultimate retirement. You’ll hear people say, “I don’t have to lift a finger. Everything is done for me.” Moreover, most residents don’t want to be active in governance. They came there to “retire,” and they are determined to do just that. Marketing and management cater to that perception.
It’s Not for Dynamic People
What’s likely, and what I’ve experienced with several friends who were thinking of senior housing, is that those who expect to work or stay active in other ways sense that lethargic life and decide that it’s not for them. That was clear at our roundtable. Most loved the idea of mutual congregate living if it were designed for people like them.
The enthusiasm for thinking of what they themselves would want was so animated and so lively that one could scarcely get a word in. Listening to the eager conversation at our table made me realize how disconnected the industry is from its potential.
The opportunity may be more in general-market multi-family housing with age-supportive characteristics than it is in betting on a generation of baby boomers who are now entering their 80s and who will be gone in a matter of decades, leaving a housing glut and a dearth of prospects behind. Change is coming, but it’s unlikely to be what most insiders expect.
