Colorado Real Estate Journal - April 20, 2016
As more baby boomers reach retirement age, demand has grown for affordable housing that accommodates their needs. Recent studies have shown that aging residents wish to remain independent and in their own homes as long as they can. Unfortunately, that isn’t always an option. Critical design issues often make it difficult or impossible to stay in their current space as mobility, strength, balance and other capacities decline. Enterprise Green Communities, an organization dedicated to providing information on how to build, rehabilitate and operate affordable, healthy and energy efficient homes, identified a need for a set of aging-in-place guiding principles. The goal was to help pinpoint design features that, if incorporated into new construction and/or existing buildings, would give seniors the option to remain in their own homes longer. Our senior living and sustainability practice areas were tasked with collaborating on the creation of an “aging-in-place” toolkit to provide developers and builders with specific and broad-reaching design standards and strategies to meet the unique requirements of aging residents. The toolkit, which will be available on the Enterprise Green Communities website in summer 2016, will offer specific guidance on how to audit existing buildings, prioritize improvements to accommodate varying budgets and incorporate aging-in-place concepts into Enterprise Green Communities certification, a prestigious designation similar to LEED for Homes that demonstrates a commitment to healthy living and resource conservation. The kit will include: • A building audit checklist that can be used to evaluate existing sites or new builds for exterior and interior components that will enable residents to age in place. The checklist includes rating boxes to indicate if measures have been met, partially met or not met at all for the project being audited. • Aging-in-place recommendations for existing Enterprise Green Communities that will provide a detailed grid of mandatory measures and optional criteria in areas, including health/wellness/ safety, emergency preparedness, education/engagement, community access and more. Communities will use the recommendations to identify potential vulnerabilities and areas of improvement. • A senior-living charrette document that will help guide the overall process with goal setting and other exercises to generate discussion. It also will offer tools to help owners prioritize and weigh potential changes in a variety of categories, taking into account that budgets may require sequencing improvements over time. • An aging-in-place-principles document that outlines detailed guidelines for accommodating a wide range of seniors – from those who are still fairly independent to those who may require assistance from a caregiver. Intended to serve both new construction and existing buildings being retrofitted, the document will outline large-scale strategies, such as the location of the site, unit layout, exterior spaces, etc., and then will get progressively more detailed down to the smallest scale, including specific room-by-room finishes and considerations. One critical area the Enterprise Aging-in-Place Toolkit will address is how to minimize hazards that can cause falls, one of the most serious health risks faced by aging adults. Studies have shown that about one-third of seniors over the age of 65 fall each year. By age 80, this number jumps to over half of seniors. Falling is the leading cause of death due to injury among the elderly, largely because after a fall, overall health can deteriorate rapidly and many never fully recover. It follows then that utilizing design features that help prevent falls is perhaps the single most important consideration for developers of new construction and those retrofitting existing buildings to accommodate seniors who want to age in place. A few of the strategies identified in the toolkit that can significantly reduce the risks of falling are: • Avoiding flooring transitions and changes in plane, and eliminating stairs as much as possible. • Utilizing nonslip flooring materials and eliminating types of carpeting that may cause seniors to trip when using walking aids. • Installing correctly positioned grab bars, hand rails and lean bars in key places, particularly in bathrooms. • Ensuring seating and beds are an appropriate height and not too difficult to get into and out of. • Upgrading lighting by putting key lights on motion detectors, installing light fixtures that can be accessed from bed and illuminating frequently traveled pathways or doors (i.e., the bathroom.) Ultimately, making modifications that allow seniors to age in place is more sustainable and curtails waste. It reduces the need to build new homes or communities in order to keep aging populations safe. By using the Enterprise Green Communities Aging-in-Place Toolkit, builders and owners can greatly improve their ability to identify, prioritize and incorporate design features that will allow seniors to live comfortably and confidently in their own homes longer.