Jack Gibson doesn’t want to live in a retirement community.
He prefers a traditional neighborhood. He likes his single-story (plus basement) three-bedroom home near a golf course in Millersville.
Gibson moved there from North Carolina in 2019 specifically because of a program designed for people like him — seniors looking to age in place.
The program is SmartLife VIA Willow Valley, a membership-based plan offering those who want the security of continuing care in their own home should they need it in the future. The plan and its growth over the past decade illustrate how demand for aging in place is shaping industry offerings.
At the start of 2015, SmartLife had 28 members who all signed up during the first six months of Willow Valley’s then-fledgling program. Early discussions involved reaching a cap of maybe 200 or 250 members, said Andrew Solodky, SmartLife’s manager of marketing and sales. There are now about 405 active members with more applications in the process, he said.
“Our program has really exceeded all of our actuarial projections,” he said.
Willow Valley isn’t the only entity working to better reach the age-in-place market. Cue the January grand opening of the Lititz satellite office of Home Instead. Director of Community Relations Lisa Miller said that made sense given that Home Instead provides home care services to people living in many of the numerous continuing care retirement communities in and around Lititz, as well as people in traditional neighborhoods.
“If you have somebody coming in to check on them, looking at the situation and helping to avoid any fall risks and things that could cause accidents? That’s huge,” Miller said. “Preventative care is awesome.”
Some of the others courting the age-in-place market include: Masonic Village in Elizabethtown, with its home assistance program; Landis at Home, which offers home care services to adults living on the Landis Homes campus or within a 15-mile radius of the Lititz office; and LutherCare and Moravian Manor Communities, who have teamed up for a program called Your Neighborhood Connection.
Among seniors looking to age in place, 37% say that’s because it’s their preference, 1 in 6 say it’s a financial necessity and the rest see it as a combination of both, according to an October 2024 survey of more than 1,000 seniors done for health care product provider Carewell. Physical space was among senior concerns.
“Surprisingly, suburban seniors — often thought to have ideal living conditions with spacious homes and family-oriented neighborhoods — reported the greatest concern, with 60% saying their homes weren’t equipped for comfortable aging,” Carewell reported in January.
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What to consider
Several Lancaster County builders are among 144 in Pennsylvania certified by The National Association of Home Builders as active Certified Age-in-Place Specialists, or CAPS. MBC Building and Remodeling in Lancaster was the first in the county to be one.
“Most homes are not built for people to stay in as they grow older,” MBC’s owner Mike Blank told LNP in 2015.
His son, Matt Blank, says this year that a growing number of clients recognize that. Even if they’re not seniors yet, when they embark on bathroom remodels, they frequently seek features like low-entry showers that they’ll want when they are, Blank said. People are thinking ahead, he added.
Gibson said proper planning is essential for aging in place.
“You have to get the right house,” he said. “I have some friends who still live in a 4,000-square-foot house in Richmond. I said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ ”
One-level is ideal, he said.
“If you have the wrong house, you’re not going to be able to do it like you want to,” he said.
Careful financial planning is also key, said Gibson, whose career in insurance helped him comb over SmartLife’s contract. He said Willow Valley’s financial position also gave him confidence the plan won’t someday fold and urged anyone considering any aging-in-place program to closely examine the financial health of its provider.
So far, Gibson said, SmartLife has worked as it should, including during the difficult period prior to his wife’s death from cancer. There was help in their home 15 hours a day toward the end, and his plan covered that. It also covered help with meal prep and other tasks after he had a shoulder operation and rides to and from cataract surgery.
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More choices
Helen Foster, chief marketing officer for Willow Valley, said SmartLife is not intended as a feeder program for the organization’s community offerings. That better-known part of Willow Valley serves about 2,600 residents, half of whom previously lived in other states, Foster said. While roughly 10 SmartLife members have transitioned into residents, that’s not the goal. Willow Valley sees two distinct markets, Foster said.
“While we believe very strongly in the social model of community life and how that enriches one’s well-being, we also recognize that there are some people who simply would prefer to stay in their existing homes or live in traditional neighborhoods,” she said.
Continuing care retirement community living is not for everyone, Foster added. That’s coming from someone recently quoted in Newsweek about why Willow Valley was ranked No. 2 on that publication’s annual list of top CCRCs in the country.
“There are people out there who would prefer not to live even in the best ones,” she said.
Many seniors also have adult children or grandchildren living with them. “The composition of the household is changing,” she said, adding SmartLife is an option for multigenerational homes.
The program started only for Lancaster County and now serves Dauphin, Lebanon and York counties. It’s similar to maybe about 40 others across the country, Solodky said, adding the concept had a slow roll out.
“There wasn’t really a great option for individuals who wanted to age in place. And now these types of programs are really helping to fill the void,” he said. “You’re going to see a lot more of these at-home programs coming into play over the next five or 10 years.”
