Twenty-five veterans died at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home including 18 who tested positive for coronavirus. More than half of the almost 100 residents in a Wilmington nursing home tested positive for coronavirus.
With its escalating death toll and rapid spread, the disease has set the stage for us to learn a terrible lesson about where seniors spend their last years.
When people get too old to live on their own in this country, they go live with their children or they move into some form of senior housing. Depending on their incomes, that housing can range from a nursing home to senior living communities outfitted like high-priced resorts.
But this seniors-living-with-seniors model has literally demonstrated fatal flaws during coronavirus, with some older Americans dying in clusters where they live.
After the coronavirus spread and death rates level off, then decline, and a vaccine is perfected for mass use, the time might be right to ask if seniors, for a variety of reasons, need to live in housing arrangements that include younger people.
One potential model could provide affordable housing for caregivers who work with seniors in the same residential complex where their clients live. Another model could enable limited-income families to live in a residential arrangement providing housing for their oldest family members while allowing young relatives to live within walking distance of the family elder. This arrangement could potentially cut down on senior-related care expenses.
Some science and plenty of common sense says seniors thrive when they are around younger, more active people. Conventional thinking suggests economy of scale makes current senior housing arrangements practical.
The King’s Lynne neighborhood in West Lynn has demonstrated for decades that younger and older residents living at different income levels can coexist in well-maintained and attractive residential complex.
Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development has a proven track record in creating innovative housing that meets different residential needs and allows people of different ages and incomes to live as neighbors.
Coronavirus will force us to learn many new lessons, and one of them may lead us to rethink for health and other reasons how we house seniors.
