By Steve Moran

This is a very personal article …

I’m 71 years old. I have three dogs, ten chickens, a garden I love, fruit trees I planted myself, and a yard that is genuinely a source of joy in my daily life. I know the day is coming when all of that becomes too much, when the physical demands outpace what I can manage, when the isolation of a private home starts to outweigh the freedom it represents.

That day is probably in the next ten years. But it is not today.

And honestly? No amount of anything a senior living community might offer or promise is going to move me. Not because I don’t understand the value of what senior living communities offer at their best. I do, better than almost anyone. But because I still have too much life right here. The chickens need feeding. The garden needs tending. I’m not ready.

All of that gives me great satisfaction, and I would lose it all in senior living.

Most of you who work in senior living are in a similar place. Even those of you who say, “This is going great; I wish I were old enough to move in.” Nearly all of you, if offered the opportunity to move in next month, would step back saying, “Someday, but I’m quite ready for that.”

Here is why: It’s because they’re not yet seriously thinking about decline. And that is completely appropriate. That is exactly the way it should be.

A Time to Be Realistic

We need to be realistic about who senior living is for, what it offers, and what it doesn’t. In truth, no matter what we do, no matter how good the dining program, how good the life enrichment home, how big and beautiful the community and apartments are, it is a very unusual choice for people in their 60s and early 70s. The product, however good it is, isn’t for me yet. And no repositioning changes that.

But here’s what I am thinking about: What if I didn’t have to wait until I moved in to start becoming part of the community?

A New Model

What if there were a social membership model, not a waiting list, not a future resident program, but a real and ongoing relationship, where someone like me could attend the dinners, join the interest groups, get to know the people, become a familiar face? So that when the time comes when the yard becomes too much, when the chickens aren’t possible anymore, when the balance tips, I’m not moving to a strange place full of strangers. I’m moving home.

That’s a fundamentally different emotional experience. The terror of the senior living move, for a lot of people, isn’t the move itself; it’s the starting over. The not knowing anyone. The being new and uncertain in a place that doesn’t know you yet. If you’ve already built relationships in the community over the previous three or four years, that terror largely evaporates.

The community benefits too. They know me. They know what I care about, what I’m good at, what I’d contribute. I don’t arrive as a stranger they have to learn. I arrive as a member of the community who finally moved in.

And in the years before I move in, I’m a visible, active ambassador. I’m telling my friends about the community. I’m bringing them to events. I’m the living proof that this place is worth knowing before you need it.

I haven’t seen anyone execute this model well yet. There are versions of it; some CCRCs have done elements of it, and some communities have affiliate programs or social memberships. But nobody has really committed to it as a core part of their strategy for addressing the anticipation-entry problem.

I think it might be one of the most important things the industry could build.