teer help, members hope to cobble together a menu
of assistance similar to what they would receive at
a retirement community, but without uprooting
their household.
The earliest villages, like Beacon Hill, were
founded in relatively affluent urban areas, though
new villages are now sprouting in suburbs and
smaller rural communities, and organizers are
adapting Beacon Hill’s model to fit economically
and ethnically diverse communities. Each is united
by a common goal: a determination to age in place.
A recent AARP survey found 86 percent of respondents 45 and older plan to stay in their current residence as long as possible. “And as people get older,
that percentage increases,” says Elinor Ginzler,
AARP expert on livable communities. (For more
on this survey, see page 74.)
In its own quiet way, the village movement
represents a radical rejection of the postwar American ideal of aging, in which retirees discard homes
and careers for lives of leisure amid people their
own age. That’s the life Eleanor and Jim McQueen
turned their backs on when they joined Monadnock
at Home.
“To dump 40 years of building a home to move
into a condominium doesn’t appeal to me at all,”
Jim says. “The idea of Monadnock at Home is, I
won’t have to.”
