Research helps elderly continue living at home

No matter where you live or work — apartment complex, suburban neighborhood, school, shopping mall, hospital, nursing home — you should have access to a “Main Street.”

Michael Hunt and his students aim to see that you do, no matter your circumstances.

In the concept of Main Street, Hunt sees an opportunity for people to get together informally, to run into each other like they did in the early years of the 20th century when the grocery store was on the corner of the block and not in the strip mall.

However, even malls have their uses as Main Streets. “Some lunch time, take a look at the Chocolate Shoppe in Hilldale,” says Hunt, professor of environment, textile and design. The Chocolate Shoppe “commons” area is just off the mall’s main thoroughfare, but with a clear view of the action.

“You’ll find a lot of people-watching, maybe by groups or individuals, maybe while eating, reading or knitting,” he says. “Our society often goes to great lengths to engineer independence — single-family housing, driving to places alone in the cocoon of our cars, working by ourselves at computers. You often see this phenomenon at work in retirement communities or nursing homes, where residents are physically taken out of the usual fabric of daily life. However, the truth is, we all need to be able to get out among one another from time to time.”

This is especially true for those who are retired, says Hunt, who has spent the past 15 years studying factors in “naturally occurring retirement communities” that make it possible for older people to remain in their own houses, rather than move to assisted-care facilities. A circumstance called “age in place” by professionals, about 90 percent of America’s senior population indeed will continue to live out their lives at home, without ever moving to assisted-care residences. That prevalence, Hunt says, makes his research all the more urgent.

He has found, for example, that convenient necessities, such as grocers, clinics and pharmacists — perhaps within walking distance — make it easier for older people to get what they need, when they need it. Hunt sees a good deal of potential in mixed-use neighborhoods.

Hunt recommends expedient access to common areas to make companionship available if and when people want it.

Hunt has made several trips to China to study how ancient principles have made it viable for generations — and/or species — to mix naturally. “Many housing units traditionally contain a courtyard,” he says. “It’s ironic, though, because as communities there develop, they are beginning to follow Western architectural practices of isolating people from each other in big modern high-rises.”

Hunt and his students are working with the Madison Area Continuing Care Consortium, which is in line for a $350,000 federal grant to study naturally occurring retirement communities in Dane County to discover factors to help people age in place.

John Noreika, executive director of Oakwood and director of the MACCC project, says that projects will draw from the fields of environmental design, nursing, nutrition, medicine, geriatrics and more, and use personnel from the private and nonprofit sectors as well as academia. He says that MACCC will create a pilot program of coordinated health-care management and services in naturally occurring retirement communities. Recommendations that grow out of the pilot will be made available to the general public.

Hunt’s involvement with the consortium began almost two years ago with a service-learning project that his undergraduate design students undertook with Noreika and Oakwood. Although Hunt’s research focuses on naturally occurring retirement neighborhoods, he and his students have found that studying life in an assisted-care residence provides invaluable insight.

“We approached it as a design challenge,” Hunt says. “When Oakwood Village expanded on Madison’s west side, we devised a partnership with them for which we contributed design suggestions, based on theoretical research,” Noreika says.

“The recommendations they made were extremely practical, easy to do and cost-effective,” Noreika says, “adjusting the height of microwave ovens or the swing of doors, the use of hardware on cabinets, suggestions to make way-finding easier for visually or hearing-limited people.”

He says Oakwood will incorporate the recommendations into the $40 million in new housing units it has planned.

Hunt adds that what often drives housing design is the fiscal bottom line. However, he points out, incorporating livability enhancements can make units more profitable.

“We’ve been extremely good at keeping people alive — no matter whether they live in nursing homes, assisted-care residencies or their own homes, as about 90 percent of older adults do,” he says.

“The challenge now is to create an environment that makes life worth living.”