By Steve Moran
A few weeks ago I came across an article about Nagaya Tower, a multigenerational apartment complex in Kagoshima on the Japanese island of Kyushu. It houses 43 people aged 8 to 93.
It sounds like the kind of retirement housing I want to live in.
The article title comes from Google’s translation of the Tower’s website (which I suspect is not quite right).
What’s It Like?
Most of the residents are age 70 and older, but younger residents, families receive discounts for helping with common tasks like taking out the trash, changing light bulbs, and moving furniture.
Once a week there is a community potluck that nearly everyone attends because being together is the entire point of the community.
This all means that community and family meld together in a kind of magical, mystical nirvana.
Did I mention that this is the kind of senior living community I want to age in?
The Biggest Failing
Not really figuring out how to deliver senior living in an intergenerational setting is perhaps the single biggest failing of senior living. The idea that I might be able to have all the benefits of senior living and at the same time be able to have dinner with my kids, grandkids, and great grandkids has huge appeal.
Maybe senior living communities should be built in the middle of residential apartments for families or in the middle of modest, first-time home buyer, single family subdivisions. It might even be that you would end up with substitute grandparents and grandkids.
No One Model … But
We have figured out there is no single model that works for everyone, but that does not mean there are not new models that need to be created to serve more older people, to serve families, and to serve our communities.
I would love to hear your ideas about how something like this might come to life.
Photo from Nagaya Tower’s Facebook page.
