Boulder – A couple of years ago, Maureen Cassulo, 65, contemplated buying an old house with her friends and converting it into condominiums with a common area where everyone could meet to chat and eat together.
That way, as she and her friends got older, they’d be able to help each other out.
Then, the registered nurse met Jim Leach, owner of Wonderland Hill Development, who plans to build an elder co-housing neighborhood called Silver Sage Village in north Boulder.
As she made new friends with others who plan to live there, she decided the new neighborhood fit her vision even better. Those who live in the 16 duplexes and townhouses will cook some meals together and hold other events in a 5,000-square-foot community center.
Planning their retirement
“We’re trying to provide an alternative to assisted living,” Cassulo said. “We’re not going to be each other’s caregivers, but we’d be involved in doing physical care that someone might need as they get older.”
Leach sees the new 1-acre neighborhood as one where “empty-nesters” and retirees will want to move. It’s next to the Holiday neighborhood at 1600 Yellow Pine St., which is named after the former Holiday Twin drive-in movie theater at the site.
“Through the community, we’ll figure out ways to do aging in place,” said Leach, 65, who also plans to live at Silver Sage. “We anticipate we are going to get 70- and 80-year-olds in the group, but it’s really for people who are younger who want to plan their own retirement neighborhood.”
Units are designed so that residents can live on one floor if they can’t walk up and down stairs, Leach said. The community center will have guest units upstairs where a caregiver or family members can stay when they come to visit.
“It’s very much that the residents do it themselves, how they want to do it,” Leach said.
Six of the units will be designated affordable under a Boulder program, selling for $120,000 and $145,000, Leach said. The other 10 homes will be sold at “market rate” prices of up to $600,000 for a little more than 2,000 square feet.
Detractors may question the high prices that come with buying one’s own house and still paying fees to maintain a fancy common area. Supporters tout the close communities that develop from getting together with neighbors several times a week.
“People are hanging around with each other and doing things together like good friends where you don’t have to drive somewhere else to find them,” Leach said. “You have a relationship with them that’s closer than Americans are used to in a typical neighborhood.”
Colorado has nearly 15 completed or proposed co-housing neighborhoods – the third-highest number in the nation – in places as diverse as Longmont and Littleton, said Neshama Abraham, co-founder of the Elder Cohousing Network based in Boulder.
The idea for co-housing comes from Denmark. Such communities – which feature private homes – are planned, owned and managed by their residents. Common facilities vary but usually include a large kitchen and dining room where residents can take turns cooking. Typically, the developments feature walkways and green space; cars often are parked away from the homes.
More freedom offered
In Denmark, elder co-housing is supported by a government that believes it can save money in health-care costs by supporting elder communities.
Existing assisted-living facilities and nursing homes with skilled nurse care range anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000 per month, Cassulo said, and seniors who live in them lose a lot of choices, from how late to stay up, to what they can eat.
By contrast, Cassulo said she expects to pay much less in Silver Sage and have more freedom. She plans to buy one of the affordable units with money from selling her current condo. Cassulo hopes to have long-term-care insurance to pay for health-care needs she might have in the future rather than apply for Medicaid. “It’s nice to have people who are peers in the community,” Cassulo said. “In other societies, elders are the wise sages. We want to recycle ourselves and give back to the community.”
