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"Just Right" is an idea and dream at this point.
"Just Right" will be a small congregate housing project located on the Monterey Peninsula for seniors.
What's congregate housing, you ask? It's similar to a boarding house style communal living arrangement where residents have private rooms with bath, but share meals and other activities of daily life.
I plan to build this project with the help and support of my friends and my community - check back often to see how I'm progressing with plans and, hopefully soon building!
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Sara,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your exciting vision of a "Just Right" congregate home for supportive senior community. I was recently talking with someone with a similar vision for Los Gatos, taking advantage of the CA law passed last year granting zoning/EIR exemptions for that form of housing.
Given your recent posts on ElderSpirit (a lovely spot, I visited a couple of years ago, and just this past week led a discussion with ElderSpirit community organizers and researchers at the American Society on Aging national conference in Las Vegas) and the national cohousing conference in June in Seattle (don't neglect the pre-conference workshops, I think Chuck Durrett's 2-day one will be highly relevant to your interests, sharing a process that can help your future residents work together effectively on an informed shared vision of the aging process and their needs), I'd like to recommend a regional event that I think will be helpful, if you can make it.
The Bay Area Community Land Trust (http://www.BayAreaCLT.org/ -- I volunteer on the board) is doing a bus tour May 2 from Berkeley to Davis, visiting several permanently-affordable senior coops and cohousing neighborhoods. They are looking to use a limited-equity cooperative model combined with cohousing principles to create communities designed not just for aging-in-place, but for maintaining intergenerational connections and supporting families.
You may want to look into partnership with professional developers... most successful cohousing neighborhoods have done so, and the process can be as little as two years (vs. five or more when you take the time to make your own mistakes, any one of which can eat up the perceived "savings" of a D-I-Y approach).
If you're interested, I'd be happy to introduce you to my friend Tod duBois, who had site control and special-election voter approval for a mixed-use senior cohousing project in San Juan Batista and was pursuing another site in Hollister, but was unable to get financing lined up as the economic crisis hit.
Good luck, and I'm looking forward to connecting and supporting your pursuit of The Next Big Thing.
Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach http://www.CohousingCoach.com/
Aging-In-Community Organizer http://www.AgingInCommunity.com/
Co-Author, Audacious Aging (just out this week! Not yet in stores)