00:00This morning on BRN, seven trends that will define senior living in 2025.
00:10Joining me now is Dr. Michelle Halloran of DeArment Consulting.
00:15Dr. Halloran, great to see you. Thanks for joining us in the program this morning.
00:19Thank you for having me, Jeff.
00:21Yeah, it's a pleasure talking with you.
00:22And we're going to talk about senior living and some major trends.
00:26But let me take a step back and ask you just some basic questions.
00:30What is senior living and how has it evolved over the past several decades?
00:38Well, you know, senior living is a broad range of offerings.
00:44Senior living could be nursing homes.
00:47Senior living is aging in place through various kind of naturally occurring retirement communities that are in people's backyard and neighborhood.
01:02And somewhere in the middle is the group that I work with most extensively, which are called Life Plan Communities.
01:09These are communities that have campuses that serve adults 55 plus.
01:17And their focus is to try to create community on these campuses and to allow folks to age in place,
01:27meaning that if they need higher levels of care later on in life, that's available to them all on the same campus.
01:34And so these Life Plan Communities, Jeff, used to be called Continuing Care Retirement Communities.
01:40And often you'll hear those terms, you know, synonymously.
01:46And Dr. Michelle, has there been an evolution?
01:50Because, you know, I think my grandparents who are now deceased, they kind of towards the end of their lives,
01:55they went into a care facility.
01:57It sounds like where you work and where we are headed is in these planned campuses.
02:06And people, I think the profession has recognized that we need to alleviate isolation, foster community.
02:14I mean, it really sounds like it's evolved.
02:17Well, it has, although continuing care retirement communities aren't new.
02:22They're over 30 years old.
02:23And this movement started actually in Pennsylvania, where I'm from.
02:28And so I kind of grew up with this field.
02:33And I feel like the continuing care retirement communities or Life Plan Communities, as they're known now,
02:41have evolved in terms of being much more person-directed.
02:45It used to be back in the day that, you know, the administrator would decide, along with the leadership team,
02:55you know, kind of what offerings, what activities, what the campus would look like.
03:01And now it's much more democratic in terms of involving residents.
03:07And these residents are even serving on the boards of these organizations and are much more involved in directing what campus life looks like.
03:19So in that respect, they have very much evolved.
03:21But the concept isn't all that new.
03:25One of the trends you talked about in your piece was solo aging.
03:29I'm assuming you didn't mean Han Solo from Star Wars.
03:34I had to be a little corny.
03:36I'm sorry.
03:36It's the morning.
03:37But what is a solo ager?
03:40And why is this a trend we need to be prepared for in aging America?
03:46Well, you know, more and more folks don't have any children or spouses as they age.
03:52And so their needs become much more important to look at if you are a retirement organization.
04:03They need help with financial planning.
04:06Many of them, you know, whether you like it or not, a lot of older women have not been involved in the financial picture in their households before their husbands have passed away.
04:18And, of course, women live longer than men typically.
04:20And so this whole notion of financial planning and budgeting is something that they may not be as familiar with as they need to be.
04:31And there's all kinds of things.
04:33You know, if you want to stay in your home, as an example, a solo ager has to prepare their home to make sure that they don't fall,
04:42to make sure that, you know, as maybe they cognitively have challenges, that there are support systems in place.
04:50Some people, you know, lose their eyesight and can't drive anymore.
04:55So solo agers are folks who don't have those kinds of support systems built in, either through their children, their spouse, or a family that lives close by.
05:06And so they're out there by their own, hence the name solo.
05:09So, yeah, and, you know, I think we completely agree the fact that women may be underprepared for their financial futures.
05:19And I know that there are organizations that are certainly working to improve upon that.
05:24Michelle, another trend you reference is longevity and well-being.
05:29Why is this an important trend?
05:30I mean, we all want to live, I don't want to live forever, but I want to live better and longer and better.
05:37Right.
05:38Well, longevity typically, as at least the way that it's thought of today, it's not just about length of life.
05:49It's also, as you mentioned, quality of life.
05:52And as people are having longer lives, and that's just the way it is, and it's going to continue, they want to figure out how to be more independent, how to be more proactive in managing their health, how to be more savvy in terms of the resources that are available to them.
06:15Many people want to continue their careers.
06:19There's a big movement now to have employers look at folks who are in their 60s and 70s as prospective employees.
06:31So this whole longevity idea is really encompassing a number of those types of things.
06:37And it's important because we don't want to just, you know, wither away as older adults.
06:44We want to make sure that our lives are vibrant.
06:48We want to make sure that we're not isolated.
06:51And so it's important for us to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves.
06:58And so the longevity movement is really about predicting illness so that we can manage it.
07:05Scientific wellness is all the rage now.
07:10And there are lots of organizations like the Buck Institute that are focused on helping people live longer, better lives and doing the research around that.
07:19Yeah, it's really, to your point, it's really defining.
07:22As I told you, I come from the retirement industry.
07:24I think retirement, the definition of retirement, what it was, you know, sitting on a rocket chair, it's completely blown away.
07:33And I think, I actually think that's a good thing.
07:36The last one I want to cover with you, Michelle, I thought this was so interesting.
07:42Inter-generational living.
07:44And look, when you look back at America, I don't know, at the beginning of the 20th century, families lived together.
07:51You had your grandparents.
07:53You had your parents.
07:54You had your, you know, maybe your aunts and uncles.
07:57How is that a, why is that an important trend?
08:00Are we kind of reverting back to that, potentially?
08:03Well, it's been long known that when the generations have a chance to interact with one another in a positive environment, they can teach each other a lot.
08:15You know, certainly elders have a lot to teach younger folks and younger folks have things to teach older.
08:22So this inter-generational movement is really born out of that more than anything else.
08:29And the fact that we have such a distance from our families, so we have to kind of put surrogate families in place.
08:37So a lot of organizations are doing inter-generational programming, whether that mean they have child care on campuses that serve elders,
08:48or they have adopt-a-grandparent programs, or they create spaces so that people can come together of different generations.
08:59And that that rich interaction is something that benefits everyone.
09:04I mean, Michelle, it's a tremendous, the trends are very important.
09:10It's a tremendous amount of information.
09:12Just last question, what do we need to do as a country?
09:17And it's kind of a, I know, you know, we've got a short amount of time, but are we prepared for all the things we're talking about this morning?
09:26What can we do to better prepare ourselves for longevity, well-being, all the things we talked about this morning?
09:34Well, we can all live seven years longer if we embrace our aging.
09:38Becca Levy from Yale discovered this, and a lot of people dread it.
09:48You know, I'm going to be 70 soon, and I am very excited about aging.
09:55And yet, I see so many younger people who dread it and feel like, you know, once they hit 50, it's all downhill from there.
10:03Well, I think it's about having a healthy attitude, and I think if each of us can embrace our own aging, that contributes to the decrease in ageism, which is so rampant in our society.
10:19So I think it starts with our attitude first, and certainly there are a lot of other things that need to be fixed.
10:24You know, we have to deal with how we're going to finance things in the future.
10:30We have to deal with declining health, and the fact that we really don't have enough caregivers for all the people who are going to need care in the future.
10:39So I don't want to minimize any of that, but I also think that as an individual, if you can look at your own age process in a positive way, as opposed to dreading it, that that's a good start.
10:53Yeah, really, really well said, Michelle.
10:56Michelle, thank you so much for joining us.
10:58Great work, as always, continue it, and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
11:03It was a pleasure, Jeff.
11:04And don't forget to subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Morning Pulse, for all the news and one place details, of course, at our website.
11:12And we're back again tomorrow for another edition of BRN.
11:14Until then, I'm Jeff Snyder.
11:15Stay safe, keep on saving, and don't forget, roll with the changes.
11:23Stay safe, keep on saving, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes, and don't forget, roll with the changes.
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