Senior MF Housing: Potential Life Extender

LOS ANGELES-Should future single adults “age in place” in their own homes, or move into senior apartments? A newly released report from Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research found that one-third of adults aged 45 to 63 are unmarried. This represents more than a 50% increase since 1980, when just 20% of middle-aged Americans were unmarried.

In the past, aging seniors living in their own homes were often cared for by spouses and children.  However, with the number of Boomers now divorced or never married, help from family is not available for many of them, according to the authors of the study, Dr. I-Fen Lin, associate professor of Sociology at Bowling Green University and Dr. Susan Brown, professor of Sociology and co-director of the NCFMR.

This debate has a direct impact on developers of multifamily senior housing. Developers who create independent senior apartments must take into account a number of factors in order to ensure that each community is tuned to the needs of cities, investors, and the residents themselves. 

While there is no “one size fits all” solution to this dilemma, at Meta Housing, we've distilled our approach to three simple laws:

1. Make Cities and Neighborhoods Better

In this age of high-tech innovations in which the newest gadget is the current buzz, we forget that wisdom has not come quickly.  It's not something that can be downloaded as an app.  Rather, wisdom is built by years of experience, a resource that our residents possess.

By bringing together older individuals into communities that foster creativity and engagement, we can actually harness that wisdom into a “think tank” of knowledge and caring. As we give the residents of senior housing communities the opportunity to become engaged and invested in the local neighborhood, we bring an invaluable resource to cities and communities. 

For example, at our Burbank Senior Artists Colony we established a mentorship program through which residents work on creative projects with at-risk teens from a nearby school. These groups collaborate on various projects, including music activities, a community garden, and documentary films. 

Working together on these projects, the older residents have improved the lives of the local teens, while also gaining emotional, mental, and physical health benefits for themselves by becoming involved in a meaningful and interesting project.

In addition, developers must continue to leverage classic real estate strategies, such as selecting development sites that are close to public transportation and retail options. 

Building in neighborhoods which are walkable, multifamily developers can help cities  reduce traffic congestion, reduce environmental effects of operating a vehicle on a daily basis, and ultimately deliver apartment communities which will maintain and, in fact, increase in value.

2.  Do No Harm

As apartment developers, the last thing we want is to create an attractive reason for older individuals to withdraw from the world. There is too much temptation to sit on the couch doing nothing for hours on end, which erodes people's physical, mental and emotional health.

As a mitigating measure, senior housing must include opportunities for socialization. 

For example, at Meta Housing we develop entire apartment communities which are completely centered around the arts and creativity. To do this, we build a variety of public and semi-private spaces into each of our apartment communities in order to fuel ongoing creative classes and events. 

We then partner with organizations who can conduct classes and activities, from screenplay writing workshops to Zumba classes—giving people incentive to get away from the TV and into a social environment.

This is especially helpful in reaching people who have suffered an incident that causes grief or withdrawal.  People who have suffered a loss or illness are sometimes prone to retreat from society. As multifamily developers, it is our responsibility to provide re-entry encouragement and opportunities for natural interaction.

The ability to participate in activities with others is an opportunity for solace that must not be left to chance.  By ensuring that these classes and activities are in place, we give our residents a built-in support system to help them through tough times and return to a fully engaged life.

3.  Deliver a Return on Investment

While people are the first priority, clearly developers of senior housing are also responsible for delivering a strong ROI to investors and partners. While there are many factors that contribute to profitability of a project, we've found that by thinking outside the box, developers can deliver these returns in unique ways.

For example, the creative communities we are developing have proven successful in delivering strong rent growth. Once leased up, the market rate units in these projects garner a greater increase in rents than similar projects without our design and management concept.

The creation of a true community of residents also keeps our residents more loyal to their communities, as the shared activities turn neighbors into true friends. By lowering resident turnover, we are also lowering our overall operating costs, which again increases the profitability of the projects.

And while we're at it, we will also likely be lengthening the number of healthy years our residents can enjoy in life. This is an example of using people, profit and planet as a triple bottom line.

John Huskey is the president of Meta Housing Corp. He can be contacted at jhuskey@metahousing.com. The views expressed in this column are the author's own.