Senior Rentals Transitions To Elderly Home Care
When you have a senior parent, the concern for their ability to maintain their lifestyle can be a significant worry. Almost without exception, senior citizens resist the idea of moving out of their house and into an assisted living facility or nursing home. As a child of a senior citizen you may see issues of safety if your aging parent continues to live independently. If their spouse has passed on, there may be issues of loneliness and depression. Hallways and doors of old homes are often not built to accommodate walkers or wheelchairs and the image of your children’s Grandma or Grandpa falling and being unable to reach you for help is frightening. And then there is the financial side of maintaining their home and paying the mortgage if it is still active.
As a transition between leaving their large family home to then move into home care, consider the possibility of a senior rentals apartment. These can take the form of a retirement village, or a independent living community of like-minded and active seniors.
The question is whether you should try to help your aging parent with moving to an assisted care facility or if it can be worked out for them to move to a senior rental apartment. There are some compelling reasons to help them stay in the house they have lived in for so long if there are ways to overcome the problems. Some studies indicate that senior citizens who live in their own homes are happier and healthier. Your parents may have long-lasting friendships in the neighborhood who provide tremendous emotional support and neighbors who can look in on your parent from time to time to assure they are safe. The ability to get out in the yard, feed the birds, keep a pet or tend a small garden has untold health benefits both mentally and physically for a senior citizen.
The steps taken to provide for the unique needs of your parents if they want to stay in their home can be daunting, time-consuming and a cause of great anxiety. The family and friends of the senior citizen can take on the chores of upkeep of the home, yard work and repairs so the home continues to remain safe and viable as a living space. Often seniors are resistant to accepting help or refuse to let others into their private lives. When assessing the level of safety and support a senior has or needs a conclusion can be that the family home no longer meets the needs or your parents and can even be a liability. Those stairs they may have had no problem with a few years ago now look like a accident waiting to happen. Those old windows and doors are a security risk and an energy hog.
From a financial point of view, you can work to reduce the costs of staying in their home but if they still have a mortgage, the outstanding balance the payments can still be high. You may be able to refinance the loan to drop the payment considerably and make it more affordable. You can also work with utilities companies and credit sources who may have programs to assist the elderly in owning their own home. By utilizing the resources already in place, you may be able to get your aging parents’ costs into a reasonable range and help them establish a budget that allow them to live comfortably on the retirement funds they have.
You can also find home nursing care and put good technology to use to make it possible for your parent to have quality care in the home and to have the resources to be able to reach out to you in the event of an emergency. Services like these do well at providing for the needs of senior citizens so they can virtually spend the entire remainder of their years living in their home where they are happy. However, many elder citizens have difficulty understanding and using remote alarm systems or maintaining the routine necessary to ensure the components are effective when needed.
Many senior rentals arrangements take care of a lot of these issues. The properties themselves are designed and built with the elderly needs in mind. Wider walkways and halls, elevator access as necessary, safer placement of amenities and fixtures, all help to enable a senior to continue to be self-sufficient and independent without your having to worry.
Being surrounded by similar senior citizens also helps provide the neighborhood watch feature that the old home may have had or become lacking.
The key to making all of these steps work is to enlist the cooperation of your senior citizen parent. By reviewing your situation, you can keep them at home if feasible or move them to a senior rental. This is a shared project with everyone’s best interests at heart and that they should do all they can to make this work. It is better that everyone agree to what is prudent to avoid coercion and resentment.
By considering all the options you may come up with a plan that makes financial and security sense by moving your parents out of the family home that no longer serves its purpose and into a senior rental that is better located and provides better amenities.
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