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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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. [/quote]

This is so, so helpful!  Thank you PP.  [/quote]

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