Times Chronicle & Public Spirit
Village model of senior living remains a boutique option
Twenty years ago, a group of pioneering older adults in Boston created an innovative organization for people committed to aging in place: Beacon Hill Village, an all-in-one social club, volunteer collective, activity center, peer-to-peer support group and network for various services.
Its message of “we want to age our way in our homes and our community” was groundbreaking at the time and commanded widespread attention. Villages would mobilize neighbors to serve neighbors, anchor older adults in their communities and become an essential part of the infrastructure for aging in place in America, experts predicted.
Today, there are 268 such villages with more than 40,000 members in the U.S., and an additional 70 are in development — a significant accomplishment, considering how hard it is to get these organizations off the ground. But those numbers are a drop in the bucket given the needs of the nation’s 54 million older adults. And villages remain a boutique, not a massmarket, option for aging in place.
Now, people invested in the village movement are asking tough questions about its future. Can these grassroots organizations be seeded far more widely in communities across the country as baby boomers age? Can they move beyond their white, middle-class roots and attract a broader, more diverse membership? Can they forge partnerships that put them on a more stable operational and financial footing?
Villages share common features, although each is unique. Despite their name,
physical structures are not part of villages. Instead, they’re membership organizations created by and for older adults whose purpose is to help people live independently while staying in their own homes. Typically, villages help arrange services for members: a handyman to fix a broken faucet, a drive to and from a doctor’s appointment, someone to clean up the yard or shovel the snow. Volunteers do most of the work.
Also, villages connect members to one another, hosting discussion groups, sponsoring outings, offering classes and organizing social events.
“I’ve lived here a long time, but I really didn’t know a lot of people living in my neighborhood,” said Nancy Serventi, 72, a retired trial lawyer who joined Beacon Hill Village nearly five years ago. “Now, because of the village, I almost always meet people on the street who I can stop and say hello to.”
In principle, this model of neighbors helping neighbors can work in all kinds of
communities, adapted for particular needs. Andrew Scharlach, an emeritus professor of aging at the University of California-Berkeley and a leading researcher on villages, believes the potential for growth is considerable — a view shared by several other aging experts. His work has found that village members have more confidence about aging in place because they expect support will be there when they need it.
In practice, however, the fierce “we’ll do it our way” independence of villages, their reliance on a patchwork of funding (membership dues, small grants and donations) and the difficulty of keeping volunteers and members engaged have been significant obstacles to growth.
“Villages’ long-term sustainability requires more institutional support and connection, whether from local or state governments, or Older American(s) Act programs or partnerships with health care providers,” Scharlach told me.