Seniors at home in co-housing

ByABC News
May 4, 2009, 1:25 AM

— -- Annie Russell lives alone but not in solitude.

While she was laid up for almost nine months by an injured knee, neighbors checked in on her regularly. They brought her ice packs, fetched water and did her grocery shopping.

Twice a week year-round, everyone in Russell's community is assured dinner with friends in the large common house of Silver Sage Village in Boulder, Colo. It's a potluck of sorts. Residents can cook the meal together in a communal gourmet kitchen.

"If somebody just wants a place to live and doesn't want to commune with their neighbors, this is not for them," says Russell, 68.

Projects such as Silver Sage are called co-housing. European-inspired housing built around a common area and a social compact that all residents agree to, co-housing has existed on a small scale in the USA for years. Now, the concept is coming to senior housing, a trend supported by advocates who favor independent living for the old.

The oldest of 79 million Baby Boomers turn 63 this year, and they are "not interested in what their parents had in terms of assisted care, wasting away in a private house or nursing home," says California architect Charles Durrett, author of The Senior Cohousing Handbook.

Pioneered in Denmark

There are only three senior co-housing developments in the USA compared with 250 built since 1985 in Denmark, a country that has fewer people than the Atlanta metropolitan area.

The first U.S. project opened in Davis, Calif., in 2004. At another in Abingdon, Va., members of The ElderSpirit Community at Trailview believe that spiritual growth is vital in the later stages of life. They vow to help each other and adopt a simple lifestyle. "We better come up with new ideas on how to better accommodate ourselves," says Durrett, who has designed about 50 co-housing developments for all ages.

He hopes it will be soon. More than 20 people from as far as North Carolina attended a senior co-housing workshop he conducted in Boulder last month. A dozen bookstores have invited Durrett to book signings.