15 years of Senior Living Advising
As Eunice K. Neubauer, CSA® Founder and President of Choice Connections looks back on her tenure, here are some of the highlights she pointed out about the Twin Cities’ senior living industry and its evolution since 2009.
Senior Living in the Twin Cites Has Matured
As more investors and developers have come in there is more overall growth, as well as mergers and consolidation of community ownership and management. This provides efficiencies but also stresses staffing availability with more communities in total.
“The positive thing about this for our clients is that it offers more choice today,” says Eunice. “Yet along with more choice comes more factors to evaluate and adds to the confusion. And, staffing all these communities is a challenge.”
Senior living amenities are more plentiful today including:
- Modern kitchens
- Laundry in the unit
- Accessible bathrooms
- Cable/Satellite TV, with some units providing a flat screen TV
- Wireless internet
- Balconies
- Variety of activities both inside and outside the community
- Underground heated parking
- Storage facilities
- Wonderful dining offerings as well as outdoor dining
- Fitness rooms intended also for therapy,
- Movie theaters
- And you may find a few with pickleball courts or a swimming pool
Wait Lists
A smaller percentage of senior living communities have years-long waiting lists. However, for those that want the 2 bedroom 2 bath large unit and are independent those wait lists today are still long.
Even though there is more memory care today, there may be a wait list for that desired option or for a spot in the continuum of care community your loved one is in.
Community Fees and Buy Ins
Today we have the same number of true ‘buy in’ or ‘Life Care’ communities as years ago. Yet there are more cooperatives for those that want to buy a share of an independent senior living unit. Minnesota is the state with the most cooperatives with the original one in Edina at 7500 York.
Most senior living communities are almost exclusively rental properties with only a few requiring large refundable deposits.
However, most senior living communities have a one-time non-refundable community fee of $1500-$3000. This was not the case in the past.
More Choices for Memory Care Today And More Demand
As a percentage of all senior housing units, memory care unit-count has increased slightly. More offerings of specialized memory care-only communities exist today on both sides of the river in St. Paul and Minneapolis. And some senior living communities have a staffed dementia coordinator.
Today there are several newer ‘boutique communities’ that are single level 20-40 studio/suite-only apartments serving memory care and higher-level assisted living. This memory care atmosphere has a noticeably less ‘locked unit’ look and feel.
Unfortunately, if your loved one has challenging behaviors, options are as difficult as they were in the past to find. And there are less geriatric-psych hospital units today to help these families.
Licensure Change in August 2021
Minnesota assisted living licensure now oversees the entire operation of housing and care whereas only care had previously been overseen via home care licensing.
More consumer protections are now in place including more transparency in rent and meal pricing as an example. Another is more protection for preserving residency through the course of a hospitalization and transitional care stay.
“The change in licensure increases accountability for care which is a positive thing”. says Eunice. With that it adds administrative burden and cost resulting in more consumer protection but higher rent and care rates.
For the consumer, it means a longer time to admit a loved one to a facility as the Director of Health and Wellness has more to do for the admission process. “Years ago it was possible to admit a loved one within several days to an assisted living or memory care facility. Today that window is often more like two weeks”, according to Eunice.
For smaller providers like residential homes, the state requirements are high. For those that have been in existence before the new licensure,they were grandfathered in for some of the new licensure requirements. Many of the new residential home owners are RNs exiting the hospital setting. They are more often choosing the one license of Assisted Living and not the Assisted Living for Dementia license because of the costs to having both.
It will take some time to see what changes come due to the burden of costs with this new licensure over the next five years for these smaller operators.
The Client Population
Choosing senior living is happening at a later age and with higher care needs today. Factors driving this trend include residual pandemic cautions, higher senior living costs, more home-care and age in place opportunities and the fact that people are living longer.
Opting to wait longer before choosing senior living can have some unintended but foreseeable negative consequences of missing the opportunity to forestall the advancement of physical and cognitive declines that the benefits of senior living socialization and supports offer. Consequently, it can actually lead to raising senior living costs and more staffing if needs are dramatically higher upon a later stage move in.
Today there are fewer of the “great generation” who were the savers. Thus, we see more that may need medical assistance because they may outlive their money. Thankfully, Minnesota increased funding to support that need in 2024 and more communities are accepting medical assistance than in the past.
Looking Forward
The service Choice Connections provides to help navigate senior living is valuable. Many clients have told us they were so thankful for our help over the years. It’s a very emotional and difficult decision for any loved one to make, to place a spouse or parent or sibling in senior living.
Our mission and core values drive our team to help in that burden of placement of a loved one. We walk alongside our clients in this journey. We can’t remove all the emotion but we can make the process less overwhelming. Eunice said, “I don’t believe this decision will ever get easier as the market evolves in the future. Rest assured, Choice Connections will be around to help.”