Independent living facilities

[Anonymous]

I’ve also known people happy at Asbury. Another IL community with continuing care is Charles E Smith.

[Anonymous]

Learn something from my mistakes. I moved my 80 year old mom into independent living. The place had an assisted living side in another part of the building. I liked the independent living side but not the assisted living side. They required a 12 month lease and the only way you could break it without penalty was if you moved your loved one to assisted living in their community. Never sign a 12 month lease (this was in VA, I believe Maryland has elderly tenant rights that are different). My mom needed assisted living 13 months in and I had to break her lease. I figured if she had to move again I may as well find the best assisted living so I did and moved her. Thankfully the place was able to rent out her apartment quickly but we were on the hook for the rent until they did. It added a layer of stress.

I would highly, highly recommend a place that offers independent living and assisted living in the same apartment. There was only one I came across, Ashleigh in Ashburn. I wish I had just started there because she wouldn’t have had to move. Live and learn.

And I would agree with a PP about proximity to you. Closer is better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And I would agree with a PP about proximity to you. Closer is better.

Absolutely! We are so happy to be less than 10 minutes away from our family member in IL--it makes visits there or at our house so much easier.

[Anonymous]

Making sure it's a place they can afford, long term, matters the very most - even more than proximity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Making sure it's a place they can afford, long term, matters the very most - even more than proximity.

And I would assume, a place that makes them happy. Even if inconvenient for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Making sure it's a place they can afford, long term, matters the very most - even more than proximity.

And I would assume, a place that makes them happy. Even if inconvenient for me.

I’d disagree. At some point proximity to you trumps their happiness, unless they truly don’t need you to help with a lot of things. If I hadn’t moved my mom 10 minutes up the road I wouldn’t be able to see her as much. Even 30 minutes away isn’t really doable after work in the evening so the visits would be limited to the weekend.

I’ve done a bunch of reading on this topic, mostly due to guilt, and at some stage of the game their safety comes before their happiness. If it’s safer for them to be close to you that’s most important. Others may disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Making sure it's a place they can afford, long term, matters the very most - even more than proximity.

And I would assume, a place that makes them happy. Even if inconvenient for me.

I’d disagree. At some point proximity to you trumps their happiness, unless they truly don’t need you to help with a lot of things. If I hadn’t moved my mom 10 minutes up the road I wouldn’t be able to see her as much. Even 30 minutes away isn’t really doable after work in the evening so the visits would be limited to the weekend.

I’ve done a bunch of reading on this topic, mostly due to guilt, and at some stage of the game their safety comes before their happiness. If it’s safer for them to be close to you that’s most important. Others may disagree.

This. We went the route of trying to please and some personalities will never be happy. If they want a family member looking out for them, a busy family member with a job and family, then the priority needs to be making things easier for the family member.

Some of us found everything made them unhappy-being at home, us visiting, us not visiting, moving to an AL, moving a new fancier AL, etc. Meds work a lot better than driving yourself insane trying to please someone who may have a difficult disposition.

[Anonymous]

My parents moved to an assisted living place. Within 3 months, all of their objections had disappeared. It was like they had no memory of the difficulty they had put us through. Instead, it was as if it had always been their idea. They're happy so that's all that's important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Making sure it's a place they can afford, long term, matters the very most - even more than proximity.

And I would assume, a place that makes them happy. Even if inconvenient for me.

I’d disagree. At some point proximity to you trumps their happiness, unless they truly don’t need you to help with a lot of things. If I hadn’t moved my mom 10 minutes up the road I wouldn’t be able to see her as much. Even 30 minutes away isn’t really doable after work in the evening so the visits would be limited to the weekend.

I’ve done a bunch of reading on this topic, mostly due to guilt, and at some stage of the game their safety comes before their happiness. If it’s safer for them to be close to you that’s most important. Others may disagree.

One of the hardest things to come to grips with—Safety over Pleasing them. My parents should have moved 2-3 years earlier. But my Mom didn’t want to live with “all those old people”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. He’s almost 82 and has decent resources (including a nice pension) and a beautiful home to sell, but at his age a buy-in makes little sense (to all of us) so we are limiting the search to monthly rental places. I’ll check out the Erickson places.

I wouldn't rule out the buy in places. My mother chose a rental place but the buy in option with monthly fee, with a 10% reduction on the refund, would mostly have been less expensive. The buy-in's we were looking at weren't that high and were 90% refundable (assuming you didn't need to draw down, which my mother won't).

[Anonymous]

Greenspring!

My mom moved there last week. She's a very active 79-year old widower.

It does have assisted living on site if the need is there in the future.

Really nice place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Greenspring!

My mom moved there last week. She's a very active 79-year old widower.

It does have assisted living on site if the need is there in the future.

Really nice place.

IT is an Ericson place.

[Anonymous]

My mother’s in a low-income, monthly-rental IL situation, so can’t speak to most of the choices that you’d be making, but here are a few of the general cultural things:

1. Definitely try the food. Even for IL, most have some requirement for meals, like daily dinner. And the better the food tastes, the better your daily life! Also worth looking into details like whether you can eat in your apartment or are expected to join the dining room.

2. Is there a social worker on staff and how are they? You mostly will never need them, but in a crisis it’s so great to have someone right there with answers.

3. Like someone else said, what’s the setting and how easy is it to get elsewhere? My mother is in DC and can walk to both services and public transportation. If the place is further out, are there vans into town or to shopping, etc, and how frequent are they? It’s not about logistics as much as quality of life — not feeling like you’re stuck somewhere.

4. Who are the other residents? Hard to get a try picture from the outside, but you can at least get some feel for things like how healthy others are (mom’s building is affected by the number of people who should be in memory care but haven’t made the move), whether they allow pets (even if he doesn’t have a dog, people stopping to say hi to someone walking a dog tends to build community in a small way), whether people join the scheduled activities (activities are so sad if no one joins, and so much more fun if people do), and the general vibe of the group (diverse or no? more intellectual, more status-conscious, something else? large enough for everyone to find their own tribe or small enough to encourage getting to know one another, and which of those is a better fit?). Agree that the social circumstances always end up feeling a lot like high school, but also each high school tends to have a different “vibe” depending on the student body. There’s a LOT of turnover, but the general vibe tends to last.

Other things that have affected quality of life but not in make-or-break ways: Staff (mom would take friendly over competent but others might choose differently), administrators and policies on things like visitors, laundry setup, location of the actual apartment and view out the window, and whether outside-door-to-apartment and apartment-to-desk/dining/laundry/etc are long walks and whether elevators are fast or at least plentiful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mother’s in a low-income, monthly-rental IL situation, so can’t speak to most of the choices that you’d be making, but here are a few of the general cultural things:

1. Definitely try the food. Even for IL, most have some requirement for meals, like daily dinner. And the better the food tastes, the better your daily life! Also worth looking into details like whether you can eat in your apartment or are expected to join the dining room.

2. Is there a social worker on staff and how are they? You mostly will never need them, but in a crisis it’s so great to have someone right there with answers.

3. Like someone else said, what’s the setting and how easy is it to get elsewhere? My mother is in DC and can walk to both services and public transportation. If the place is further out, are there vans into town or to shopping, etc, and how frequent are they? It’s not about logistics as much as quality of life — not feeling like you’re stuck somewhere.

4. Who are the other residents? Hard to get a try picture from the outside, but you can at least get some feel for things like how healthy others are (mom’s building is affected by the number of people who should be in memory care but haven’t made the move), whether they allow pets (even if he doesn’t have a dog, people stopping to say hi to someone walking a dog tends to build community in a small way), whether people join the scheduled activities (activities are so sad if no one joins, and so much more fun if people do), and the general vibe of the group (diverse or no? more intellectual, more status-conscious, something else? large enough for everyone to find their own tribe or small enough to encourage getting to know one another, and which of those is a better fit?). Agree that the social circumstances always end up feeling a lot like high school, but also each high school tends to have a different “vibe” depending on the student body. There’s a LOT of turnover, but the general vibe tends to last.

Other things that have affected quality of life but not in make-or-break ways: Staff (mom would take friendly over competent but others might choose differently), administrators and policies on things like visitors, laundry setup, location of the actual apartment and view out the window, and whether outside-door-to-apartment and apartment-to-desk/dining/laundry/etc are long walks and whether elevators are fast or at least plentiful.

This is so, so helpful! Thank you PP.

[Anonymous]

What's your parent's network like? How involved do you want to be? How much are you willing to "take on" visiting every other week, etc. IL is much cheaper than AL and some have ala cart services that allow you to pay for advanced care as needed, separately and also provide meals, activities, house cleaning, transportation, etc. My parent is thriving in IL and we have a family member visit every weekend to help them as needed with pill refills, shopping, or anything else. I don't think my parent needs every weekend so it could change to every other weekend having a family member visit soon.