Issues — Living Arrangements
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ShareAging Populations Face Challenges in the Suburbs
In an article at the Senior Planet, Barbara Sadick reports that suburbs aren't designed for aging populations, citing mobility, architecture and isolation as issues facing those who stay.
Aging in Place, Netherlands Style
Where can an older person (or couple) live and never have to worry about moving again? In an Aging Today blog from the American Society on Aging, Victor Regnier reports on Holland's Apartments for Life, where residents stay, permanently, in specially designed apartments. When their health changes, their services change but they don’t move to a new facility.
Health Compromised for Nondrivers
In a Well blog at the New York Times, Jane Brody examines how life in a vehicle-centered suburb—where quality groceries, recreation, health care and social opportunities can be accessed only by car and where public transportation may be lacking—is simply not good for our physical or mental health.
A Home for Everyone
In an article from the Retirement pages of the New York Times, Fran Hawthorne reveals that living arrangements for older people are now as diverse as the needs of the population they serve.
Retirement Communities That Fill a Niche
If you’d like to spend your later years with people who share your professional or cultural background or hobbies, you’re in luck. More and more retirement communities cater to niche markets—even retired nudists—writes Sally Abrahms in an AARP Bulletin article.
Less Is More
In an essay in the Wall Street Journal, Ellen M. Kozak laments the unnecessary stuff she has accumulated and contemplates “extreme downsizing”—returning to the minimalist life she had just out of college.
Retirement Options That Respect Your Budget
Four New Old Age blogs in the New York Times describe living arrangements for older people that are friendlier and less expensive than other options: a community of RVs, an urban “village,” shared housing, and cohousing for seniors. Each blog includes a video.
Can't Wait to Share Meals and Friendship
Elder cohousing offers a chance to plan a community and a lifestyle for your later years—a prospect so appealing that people in midlife are getting involved, writes Sally Abrahms in an article that was published in the AARP Bulletin.
Friends Stick Together in Retirement
This New York Times article explores the benefits of living near friends when you retire. Meet some couples who seriously considered what kind of neighbors they wanted nearby when deciding where to live in their later years, and learn how those decisions paid off.
Is Mom or Dad Moving In?
In a Bangor (Maine) Daily News article, medical educator David Horgan writes on how life changes, for better and for worse, when an older parent moves in. He offers suggestions based on the book he co-authored, When Your Parent Moves In: Every Adult Child's Guide to Living with an Aging Parent (2009).
Why Is This Student in a Nursing Home?
In this New York Times piece, Katie Zezima reports that sending gerontology students to live as residents in a nursing home may better prepare them to work in a care facility.
Putting the Home Back in Nursing Home
Is it possible to transform nursing homes into places we wouldn’t mind living in? Journalist Beth Baker says it is. In this interview in Aging Horizons Bulletin, she describes the coming revolution in long-term care. Baker is the author of Old Age in a New Age: The Promises of Transformative Nursing Homes (2007).
Prefab Granny Flats
Must multigenerational living mean giving up privacy? Not if you build a quick-to-assemble, prefabricated granny flat on your property, writes Lindsey Getz in Aging Well Magazine.
To Stay or Not to Stay? That Is the Question
Age in place or move to a care facility? Paula Span, New York Times blogger and author of When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions (2009), discusses one of the hardest decisions you may ever make for yourself or someone you love.
Aging in Place
Most people say they want to live at home as they age, but they don’t do the planning to make that happen. Seattle Times columnist Liz Taylor describes seven major barriers to staying safely in your home as you grow older.
Where Are All the Grandparents?
Few American families have live-in grandparents today. Have we abandoned the older generation? It’s all a matter of economics, according to this New Old Age blog in the New York Times.
Hard Lives, Tied to the Land
Surviving far from neighbors, help and services—and in tough economic times—life-long farmers find growing older is not easy, writes Kirk Johnson in a New York Times article, reprinted in the (Sarasota, FL) Herald-Tribune. Are they tough enough to withstand the isolation?
Living Like the Golden Girls
Remember TV’s Golden Girls? The show featured shared housing: older women who would otherwise have rattled around alone in homes too big for them lived together. But sharing isn’t for everyone. This New Old Age blog from the New York Times reports on a service that helps people figure out if shared housing would be a good fit and how to find a residence if the answer is yes.
A Fresh Look at Long-Term-Care Facilities
Once fearful of ending up in a nursing home, New York Times Personal Health columnist Jane Brody reports that she was invited to tour a facility in Miami that changed her perception of long-term-care. She offers a checklist to help search out quality nursing homes.
Aging, Together
In a New Old Age blog in the New York Times, Paula Span writes that she has fantasized about growing old with a group of friends in a small community. Cohousing fits the fantasy and she notes that, while many such developments are multigenerational, a few are being built just for older people.
Making Sense of Future Housing
In this helpful guide by Nell Bernstein, senior editor of Caring.com, you'll find explanations of a wide array of housing options. Learn what may be right for your family members and what you may want to consider for your own future.
Our Mission
The Silver Century Foundation promotes a positive view of aging. The Foundation challenges entrenched and harmful stereotypes, encourages dialogue between generations, advocates planning for the second half of life, and raises awareness to educate and inspire everyone to live long, healthy, empowered lives.
"It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment; in these qualities old age is usually not poorer, but is even richer."
Cicero (106-43 BC)