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The senior residing business should be bolder in shifting past present fashions to satisfy the wants of the following technology of older adults.
Earlier this week, I caught up with Serenbe CEO Steve Nygren, whose firm is behind a sprawling growth in Georgia that plans to broaden its new-urbanism-inspired campus with every part wanted to maintain a completely functioning wellness neighborhood. The proposed enlargement features a college, lodge, retail and industrial areas together with non-public properties.
“It’s turning into extra apparent that the best way we’ve got been constructing locations for individuals has not been working,” Nygren instructed me. “I believe all of us should agree that possibly it isn’t working and there must be new fashions.”
Whereas I don’t suppose senior residing operators want to repeat the Serenbe mannequin particularly, I do suppose the corporate’s imaginative and prescient is one which extra firms ought to take note of as they ponder the way forward for senior residing. It’s been stated time and time once more that the boomers don’t need a scientific or stuffy place to dwell, resist labels and wish someplace that each caters to their wants and affords them a completely different sort of way of life.
Child boomers between the ages of 60 and 78 accounted for barely greater than half of all residence sellers in 2024, in line with the Nationwide Affiliation of Realtors’ 2025 Consumers and Sellers Generational Developments report. After they do promote, they’re usually shifting nearer to household or associates, downsizing or coming into retirement, in line with the report.
“[Boomers] promote their properties, hand over possession they usually need to transfer into one thing that’s enticing to them and never a lateral transfer,” Helios Healthcare Advisors Managing Director Mario Santiago not too long ago instructed me.
I believe that extra firms ought to take that into consideration and plan communities that supply one thing greater than a “lateral transfer.” The excellent news is that there are firms on the market attempting to just do that – however the rub is that growth challenges make these initiatives powerful to pencil out, particularly if they’re massive and sprawling. Nonetheless, I believe there are classes discovered that operators can higher incorporate into their progress plans.
On this week’s unique, SHN+ Plus Replace, I analyze latest exercise on senior residing wellness and supply the next takeaways:
– How the senior residing business has grown its wellness choices lately, and why it should go additional
– Information on loneliness and isolation that reveals there’s extra the business can do to transcend being a “lateral transfer”
Recap of senior residing’s wellness push
The senior residing business is awash in new concepts with which firms are in search of to draw tomorrow’s residents. However I believe there are even higher alternatives to broaden wellness applications or retrofitting current fashions with extra value-based care cost choices that may assist preserve residents effectively for longer.
Operators like Bickford Senior Dwelling, Juniper Communities and Lifespark are becoming a member of forces with different firms and constructing new value-based care fashions, and I believe there may be loads of knowledge contained therein for the remainder of the senior residing business. Utilizing its Connect4Life device, Bloomfield, New Jersey-based Juniper is ready to combine personalised care providers together with establishing a sturdy wellness mannequin that ties collectively care coordination, on-site care supply and ancillary scientific providers as residents age.
“In easy phrases, we are saying wellness is about meals, health and enjoyable,” Juniper CEO Lynne Katzmann stated earlier this yr.
During the last two years, I’ve additionally seen a few of the largest gamers within the business getting concerned in new wellness fashions. In 2024, Welltower (NYSE: WELL) acquired a 25-community lively grownup portfolio from Affinity Dwelling, increasing the corporate’s “wellness housing” portfolio to almost 25,000 models.
On the time, CEO Shankh Mitra commented that the Affinity acquisition helped to handle a “vital and rising unmet demand for wellness-focused rental housing” choices for older adults.
This yr, Commonwealth Senior Dwelling launched a wellness mannequin for residents referred to as Journeys. The operator piloted the mannequin in eight communities final yr to construct custom-made way of life and care choices primarily based on resident curiosity. Different operators together with Watermark Retirement Communities, Liberty Senior Dwelling, Senior Useful resource Group have taken steps within the final two years to solidify their wellness choices. I see themes inside these organizations putting higher emphasis on care coordination and know-how integration to help wellness objectives.
“We’re centered on resident well-being to create participating experiences that encourage longer stays,” Watermark Retirement Communities COO Jeff Slichta instructed me earlier this yr.
In 2024, Evanston, Illinois-based Mather opened a $370 million life plan neighborhood, referred to as The Mather, in Tysons, Virginia that goals to redefine senior residing wellness and way of life requirements for the following technology of senior residing prospects by means of immersive programming, facilities to enhance well being like a saltwater pool and an infrared sauna.
Programming was designed round varied Blue Zone ideas, together with incorporating philosophies of Chinese language drugs and Japanese eating. The Mather’s forward-thinking design has helped appeal to youthful older adults, with three-fourths of the neighborhood’s present residents are both boomers or Gen X-ers.
“It’s usually very tough to attain that in senior residing, in order that’s been probably the most thrilling elements for me to see after I visited,” Mather CEO Mary Leary instructed me earlier this yr. “Once we envisioned this challenge, we wished to draw the following technology of older adults and it’s been very well-received.”
Reflecting on Serenbe’s plans, I believe there is a chance for senior residing operators to go even bolder with their designs. With the rise of wellness in senior residing, the time period additionally has taken on a considerably ambiguous which means. Based mostly on operators’ said plans, “wellness” might be something from plant-based meals within the eating room and spa remedies to care coordination and preventative healthcare.
Lifespace Communities CEO Jesse Jantzen not too long ago stated that whereas excellent care represents “desk stakes” in senior residing, the true “differentiator” is wellness. However I believe wellness can solely function a differentiator if senior residing operators actually supply one thing completely different from their rivals.
I don’t suppose which means firms essentially must develop accommodations, faculties or industrial areas on their campus. However I do suppose that extra operators ought to ponder what they actually imply once they invoke the phrase wellness, and attempt to differentiate their providers accordingly.
Information on loneliness, unhappiness present extra alternatives for wellness in senior residing
The senior residing business has an essential position to play in protecting older adults from feeling lonely or sad, and latest surveys help that conclusion. However I believe latest information reveals there’s much more senior residing operators can do, together with with regard to wellness of their communities.
Continual sickness, psychological well being and bodily well being are all elements in driving continual loneliness in older adults.
In 2023, greater than a 3rd of older adults between 50 and 80 reported feeling remoted from others no less than a few of the time, a lower from 2020 figures (56%) however nonetheless above ranges reported in 2018 (27%), in line with College of Michigan’s Nationwide Ballot on Wholesome Getting old. The report additionally discovered that 37% of older adults between 50 and 80 felt an absence of companionship in 2023, in comparison with 34% in 2018.
The College of Michigan ballot additionally discovered that about one-third of older adults between 50 and 80 have rare contact, outlined as as soon as per week or much less, with individuals exterior of their residence in 2023, which is up from 28% in 2018.
Loneliness stays notably excessive amongst older adults with truthful or poor psychological well being, the report states, with 77% reporting feeling remoted and 52% of older adults with truthful or poor bodily well being reporting emotions of isolation.
Serenbe’s Nygren cited the U.S. drop within the 2025 World Happiness Report back to the bottom rating ever of twenty fourth out of 146 international locations, a lower from 2012 when the U.S. ranked eleventh, as among the many causes for the corporate’s bold imaginative and prescient.
Well being care prices are additionally ballooning, as U.S. well being care spending accounted for 17.3% of gross home product in 2022 and elevated 7.5% to $14,570 per capita in 2023, in line with the American Medical Affiliation.
Senior residing communities can play a job in serving to preserve residents effectively and doubtlessly result in higher well being outcomes. A 2024 NORC research discovered that communal senior housing is related to higher longevity versus residing locally at massive.
However there may be broad variation in these figures, with residents within the prime 25% of senior residing communities residing greater than two months longer on common than residents within the backside 25% of communities. Whereas I don’t have any information to this finish, I ponder how a lot wellness and continual situation administration helped make that distinction between the highest and backside communities.
After all, there are nonetheless quite a few challenges to extra wellness-forward designs. For one, constructing out-of-the-box concepts usually requires new building or intensive renovations to an current property. As senior residing growth stays powerful and financing for brand new initiatives stays scarce, I believe there may be solely a lot senior residing firms can do to suppose exterior the field, no less than by constructing anew.
I believe Juniper’s Connect4Life program together with different value-based care efforts current a doable manner ahead for wellness that doesn’t embrace ground-up growth, however such plans additionally require cautious planning, good information assortment and operational precision.
Nonetheless, on the finish of the day, I believe there is a chance for senior residing firms that need to develop greater in wellness. It should require operators, traders and house owners to tackle extra threat, suppose creatively and problem-solve alongside the best way. However the excellent news is that initiatives like Serenbe ought to push the envelope and function inspiration for what is feasible for these leaders and organizations which are keen to problem the established order.