Baby Boomers' Dwellings Become Impressive "Control Centers" - But Not Ideal For All
Living to a ripe old age has its downsides. After entering their mid-60s and beyond, older people are at greater risk of experiencing various personal setbacks.
Mobility limitations, chronic health problems, less physical energy, memory issues, and boredom are more likely. Spousal divorces and deaths result in higher numbers living alone and experiencing increased social isolation and loneliness.
But life span psychologists tell us that most older people are quite resilient. They have the ability to cope constructively with these undesirable life events. They are able to take adaptive actions and bounce back from their misfortunes. For example:
They try to better detect, treat and manage their health problems.
They look for alternative ways to perform self-care tasks and become more mobile.
They change how they access their daily shopping and other essential needs.
They try to make their surroundings more compatible with their limitations.
They explore new ways to actively engage with their social worlds and enjoy rewarding intellectual and leisure pursuits.
In so doing, they strive to regain control of their lives and to feel positive about themselves.
Such responses are especially characteristic of older baby boomers. This is a generation distinguished by their self-reliant values and strong beliefs in their ability to get things done.
Where Will Older People Most Likely Feel In Control?
But some older boomers cope more successfully than others. Why does this happen?
Where they live can make a significant difference. Not all places of residence offer equal opportunities or resources enabling older people to deal with their problems.
Ideally, older people need to live in locations that help to alleviate their stress, fulfill their needs, support their capabilities, maintain their social connections, and nurture their individual achievement and dignity.
But what places of residence are capable of meeting all these needs?
To better understand this, we need to recognize that people of all ages live in six distinctive settings simultaneously:
Dwelling: this is the occupied physical structure, including the rooms, interior spaces, and contents of the owned residence, condominium unit, rental apartment, or manufactured home.
Dwelling vicinity: this encompasses the adjacent dwellings, buildings, apartments, hallways, and common areas; or the physical/natural areas surrounding the dwelling, which are in hearing or seeing range
Neighborhood: this includes the dwellings, commercial areas, and other land uses typically within walking or very short driving distance of the dwelling vicinity
Community: this is the surrounding physical area often referred to as cities, suburbs, towns, villages, or rural areas.
State, province: this is the administrative unit that typically manages political decisions and actions within its boundaries
Nation: this is the country, such as the United States or Canada, where the person resides
Dwellings: Where Territorial Control is Maximized
I believe that older people's dwellings are the most relevant residential environments in their lives. Inside their own four walls, they can take actions to constructively manage or tolerate those late-life misfortunes. Here, they can age optimally—the best way they can.
So why single out dwellings as opposed to the other five places?
The key is how older people budget their time. One way they cope with their adverse personal circumstances is to restrict their "outside" activities. Their dwelling then becomes the primary arena in which they conduct and control their lives.
Their retirements often had similar effects. Older people often reduced the time they spent outside their dwellings when they transitioned from full-time paid work to part-time employment, volunteering, intellectual pursuits, or leisure-oriented activities.
Environmental psychologists also help us understand the dwelling's greater importance. Because of the relatively small, well-defined, and enclosed spaces of their homes, older people feel they have territorial control. Here, their behaviors and experiences are familiar, predictable, and positive. Here they are masters of their own personal space.
For example, in their dwellings, they can influence their social interactions—who hears and sees them, who they talk to, and who they listen to. Often their reluctance to give up this control is why they reject home-sharing and accessory (in-law) apartment arrangements.
In their own homes, older people can be themselves. How they look and act is their business. How they arrange their furnishings, possessions, and clothes is their concern. How well they age becomes a private matter.
They can resist recommended modification changes, which would admit to their vulnerabilities and, from their perspectives, make their dwellings look and feel like nursing homes.
Feeling safe and secure in their own homes, older people are the ones who decide on the care they receive. They can exert veto power preventing family caregivers or paid workers from passing through their doors. They are able to influence who assesses and treats their health and self-care challenges.
And in their final expression of control, they will opt to die in the comfort of their own homes rather than in sterile medical facilities.
Elsewhere, Territorial Control May be Elusive
The vulnerable old have much less control in places outside their dwellings. They risk confronting people, activities, and conditions that make them uncomfortable and insecure. They can be stressed by traffic, crime, bad weather, noisy and inconsiderate neighbors, absent or unsafe walking pathways, inaccessible buildings, distant stores and services.
They must embarrassingly broadcast their vulnerabilities—such as a slower or unsteady gait or a reliance on canes and walkers. They worry about being seen as incompetent.
They find themselves in long-term care settings with others in charge.
The Modern Dwelling "Control Center"
With the introduction of dwelling connectivity and gerontechnology solutions, older people are better able to take even greater charge of their lives and surroundings—more so than any previous generation.
The result is that their dwellings are becoming unrivaled "control centers," some examples of these types of solutions are:
Vendors and providers are now able to deliver older people's most essential goods and services directly to their dwellings. Ipads, Iphones, internet-enabled computers, and voice-artificial intelligence devices (e.g., Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant) are able to provide easy access to e-commerce providers (e.g., Amazon), stores, restaurants, pharmacies, and financial services. They also make it possible to connect with friends and family members.
Videoconferencing and social media (e.g., Zoom, Facetime) also help older people fend off loneliness, connecting them with family and friends. Using "virtual" reality modalities, they can also explore new leisure and recreational experiences (e.g., travel sites) and find people with common interests.
New models of home care (e.g., the CAPABLE program) offered by interdisciplinary teams of occupational therapists, personal care aides, registered nurses, and handypeople make independent living more feasible.
Other home care services specifically target low-income renters. In the SelfHelp Active Services for Aging Model (SHASAM), onsite social workers assess the health of older residents and help them access public benefits.
New private sector companies (e.g., Upside) now sell easy-to-implement packages of supportive services to older people in rental apartments.
New companies (e.g., CVS pharmacy in the U.S.) are becoming home care providers. They recognize that seniors prefer care in their dwellings rather than in medical facilities.
Wearable sensors (smartwatches, bracelets, portable medical devices)—body implants in the future—and related e-health and mobile health apps enable older people to detect, evaluate, and manage their acute and chronic medical conditions in their dwellings.
Telehealth communications reduce trips to a doctor and help them manage their physical and mental health problems.
Sensors strategically placed in their dwellings can detect unhealthy interior environments: temperatures too low or high, air pollutants, dampness, water leaks, and poor lighting.
Other sensor-based monitoring technologies alert family members or professionals if older people have accident- or health-related emergencies, self-care difficulties, or display uncharacteristic inside-the-home activities (e.g., remaining in bed all day).
But as with so many things in life - nothing is perfect
Even with all the benefits of these solutions, we must be careful not to overromanticize a dwelling-centered lifestyle. Much research shows that out-of-home activities improve older adults' physical and emotional health. And they benefit in obvious ways from "daily exposure to fresh air, sunlight, trees, and nature."
It also won't be the first choice of many older adults who don't feel compelled to give up their outside activities. Their dwelling vicinities may have accessible recreational and leisure opportunities (e.g., gyms, gardens, clubhouses, walking paths, and social activities). Their city and suburban neighborhoods and communities may have age-friendly amenities and activities.
Alternatively, they will occupy gated suburban subdivisions, planned active adult communities, or senior cohousing communities designed with older people's safety, security, and activities in mind.
Moreover, some older people occupy dwellings that are inherently weak "control centers," as the following examples reveal:
Some may be financially stressed because their monthly dwelling costs overburden them. Feeling in control is difficult when older people must cut back on food and healthcare expenditures to pay their mortgages or rents.
Alternatively, their dwellings suffer from physical deficiencies that create safety and health hazards—especially falling. For those with mobility limitations, hard-to-reach cupboards, stairs, slippery, uneven, and cluttered floor surfaces, leaking roofs and windows, and poorly lit spaces are not conducive to feelings of residential mastery.
Feeling in control is also difficult for those in dwellings located in remote or economically depressed communities. These places have poor internet service or difficult-to-access goods and services—particularly health care or supportive self-care services for older people.
Not all older people will want or be able to take advantage of the "control" capabilities these new technologies offer. There will be various reasons: unaffordability, lack of information, difficulty using, and privacy concerns.
A Hopeful Future
Most older boomers dread the prospect of having to curtail a once-active lifestyle and spend most of their days in their homes or apartments. The good news is that they can better cope with these less desirable scenarios because their dwellings now have substantial "control center" capabilities.
As a result, they will hopefully have a pathway to feeling safe, healthy, independent, socially connected, and optimistic about their lives.
About the Author
Stephen M. Golant, Ph.D., is a leading national speaker, author, and researcher on the housing, mobility, transportation, and long-term care needs of older adult populations. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, a Fulbright Senior Scholar award recipient, and a Professor at the University of Florida. Golant’s latest book is Aging in The Right Place, published by Health Professions Press. You can contact him at [email protected]
