My dad, in his 70s at the time, saw a poster on the University of Dayton campus when he was an adjunct professor there. It read, “FREE PIZZA FOR SENIORS!”
Dad was feeling like he could go for a slice, but it didn’t click until he showed up for one that “seniors” meant people in their last year as an undergrad! 🙂
Though funny, that story has serious implications for future quality of life for some of us.
I have a feeling that if my father had an easy way in his 80s to attend lectures at a college and have debates with students over pizza, he would have lived longer and healthier. So hearing about Mirabella was sad for me. At first.
Mirabella is a university-based retirement community at Arizona State. Located on campus, residents can audit nearly any class they like and “live campus life like a student.” That is, if students lived in resort-type life plan communities with fine dining.
As a life plan community, Mirabella offers “access to a continuum of care at discounted rates,” which means access to assisted living, skilled nursing and more, if needed.
The costs for continuing care aren’t clear, but..
A one-bedroom with single occupancy at Mirabella has a one-time entry fee in the range of $476,300 to $1.2 million+, with a monthly cost of $5,232 – $5,693.
This story is about people paying entry fees in excess of $7 million to age in luxury campuses. You might think that this has nothing to do with most of us, but that’s not how I see it:
No one can age well without support.
And WE AS NEIGHBORS are continuing care retirement communities lying in wait for the “massive middle”: people who earn / own too much to qualify for public long-term care assistance, but not enough to afford private senior housing communities.
And I’m talking even the modest ones.
Mirabella made me sad “at first” because I could see Dad thriving on a college campus in his latter years. But the more I learned, the less I thought Mirabella would have worked for my dad, means to pay or not: the vibe and focus on luxury wouldn’t have resonated with him.
Dr. Sara Zeff Geber is a leading authority on solo aging.* She made a comment on a post about senior housing on LinkedIn that I said I’d swipe while giving her credit:
“Don’t make things fancy. Make them interesting.”
That’s advice for you and me as much as anyone: We neighbors can create experiences approximating some of the interesting perks at places like Mirabella.
Americans are having fewer kids, college enrollment is down and higher ed is getting creative to fill its coffers. University-based or adjacent retirement communities help with this.
What if another way is to pitch a local college to let lifelong learners in our neighborhoods audit certain classes for a fee? And what if we helped covered the fees with grants?
My mom, who’s 94, is totally down for that—she said she’d love to take classes at a college so long as there are no prerequisites! If you plan to keep learning into your 90s, listen to Zig Ziglar and think about how you can facilitate learning for someone else now:
“You can have everything in life you want, if you just help other people get what they want.”
Besides learning, there are other aspects of retirement communities that we can approximate in standard multifamily housing. If you’d like to work on this with me, learn more here.
*A solo ager is an adult 55+ aging without the support of children or other close relatives. Here’s a relevant post I wrote: 5 wishes, 2 solo agers and a lockbox.
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