When I read an early chapter of Gawande's Being Mortal about people aging with their younger family right there to support them I was almost moved to resolve I would do this for my parents.
Then I read later chapters about more independent ways for elderly people to live with dignity and support, and I thought, maybe I was a bit hasty.
I like the idea of living near my parents but with a degree of privacy. I saw a townhouse with a ground level garage and thought, that would be perfect to convert into a nice one-bedroom!
One cool thing they have in Germany is the maisonette, a large bilevel apartment style that can be closed off to be two complete living spaces, or can opened up to be one space - good for parents with adult children as their circumstances evolve.
I've told my kid that, if he wants an inheritance, he needs to let us live in his basement. Otherwise all the money we've saved is going to get spent on assisted living.
We turned the old cinder block garage behind our house into a little granny flat for my mother-in-law to stay in a couple of days per week while she helps with childcare. This sort of DADU situation could be a nice longer term compromise in multigenerational living between privacy and proximity.
Of course, I read "multigenerational housing" and jump to ADUs and maisonettes and other home types, when in fact in the US this is more often what it looks like.
One cool thing they have in Germany is the maisonette, a large bilevel apartment style that can be closed off to be two complete living spaces, or can opened up to be one space - good for parents with adult children as their circumstances evolve.
A friend of mine in Prague has something similar: she has lived in the same house all her life, but she has segued from "I am a child and I live in my parents' large two-story house" to "I am a young adult and I live in a small flat upstairs from my parents' ground floor flat" to "I live upstairs with my husband and children and we care for my parents who live on the ground floor" with only a mild amount of remodelling needed.
My folks should be OK - they live very close to my brother now (like two streets away) and he has room for them in a granny flat if needed.
That sounds amazing. I wish we'd thought of that.
My in-laws bought a lot across the street from their house and want us to built a house there. I'm getting really good at setting boundaries.
I think as long as everyone has their own private space (bathroom, kitchenette) it can work out very well. If we ever move houses I want an ADU.
As long as everyone lives their three score and ten it can work out well. When people live longer it turns to hell.
I'm still planning my ADU, waiting to pounce once interest rates drop. If anyone needs long-term housing in Sacramento (market rate), keep me in mind!
I think as long as everyone has their own private space (bathroom, kitchenette) it can work out very well.
And their own entrance. Important.
My brother's granny flat is connected to the rest of the house by a secret door that is only visible from - and can be locked on - the non-granny side.
My sister worked out a pretty good deal. Her and her husband built their house on land that used to be attached to my parents' lot. They aren't the closest neighbors to each other, but it's an easy walk. (Or it would be if it wasn't such a steep hill, but my parents' knees are in decent shape.)
And then there's the family halfway down the block from me, who live in a rowhouse, and when the one next to them was up for sale, bought it for the wife's mother. They're currently working on knocking down the wall in between and making it one double-wide house.
When we stay with my parents, it's all in one house. Everyone has a room of their own who should, but it's still like being a guest. When we stay with Cassandane's parents, they have an complete apartment over the garage. The stove is just a hot plate, but other than that it's fully furnished. We spend a lot of time with them while there because it's easier and more pleasant, but could totally keep to ourselves if we needed/wanted to.
Of course I realize that none of these approaches are scalable.
The actual house isn't the half of it. The "where's the house going to be" is huge.
Many people* are saying.
*Henry George, etc.
Yeah. But having over an acre of perfectly maintained lawn is a very common fetish. If you want that, you either need to be rich enough to tell Henry George to go fuck himself or you need to go live out with the Trumplefuckstins on cheap land.
Won't the deer keep it trimmed for you?
I guess you've no option but a train of pack-goats. What a terrible outcome.
We have a distinct shortage of bedrooms in this house. Three, and one can be split in half to make two tiny bedrooms.
(Sorry JRoth but) my one big regret from the addition is letting myself be talked out of planning for one bedroom per kid. I wish I could figure out a way to fix this, but I go in circles.
Circle long enough and you can pay for the kids to have their own bedrooms at college.
18. Geese. They give eggs rather than milk, but they double as very effective guard dogs and lawnmowers.
21 if you don't mind the poop all over your lawn
My parents are still very independent in their early 70s and don't do much childcare but invite us over for dinner every Sunday. They would not want to live with our animals even if multigenerational housing were on the table and neither house could be easily split.
The house next door to us was flipped and resold in the last couple of years but before that was a Grandma-Mom-Daughter family setup that seemed to work well because the adults worked different shifts and managed childcare when they were home. The real twist though is that Grandma's mother and that mother's second husband live across the street. They have their own grandchildren stop by every morning to help out before getting on the school bus and I think the ont who finished high school a year or so lives there now. The great-grandmother's other children check in regularly and do chores. There's poverty but not major overcrowding and it seems to work fairly well. Doesn't mean I think Moby should do it!
Now that I think about it, my parents' across-the-street neighbors have kids a little younger than I am who both bought houses on the street, one next door to them.
I say I'm looking forward to having the house to myself and I think I mean it. I'll only be 50 when Selah turns 18, which should leave a lot of time. But if we end up fostering again, anything could happen to change that.
Geese are bigger assholes than three-year-olds, even.
I'd take a flock of turkey vultures over geese any day of the week. They don't do anything to keep the grass trimmed, I guess, but they're great help at disposing bodies.
I'm told.
My father-in-law lives with us and it's great. You do need a lot of space for it to work, though.
That's another option, I suppose. Does he keep the grass down?
4 Terrific article. Is it accurate? Photo of LA in 1901 looks like a very nice liveable place. Others not so much
32: "Is it accurate?" Not sure what you're getting at. The article has a lot of statistics backing itself up on the systemic picture.
Multi-generational housing, if that's what the kids/parents/grandparents are calling it these days, are common enough among immigrants that conversations where the idea is more or less an idea seem weird to me. My paternal grandmother lived with us most of the time I was growing up. She lived a few blocks away until I was about 6 and then moved into our house. I don't remember exactly what the remodel involved but I think it was more a re-outfitting of space behind the garage that was sort of an unfinished basement than completely new rooms. But the house had already been expanded before and I was young enough to have no memories of it in its smaller size. When we moved later, we only considered houses where there was some separate but connected space for my grandmother.* Meanwhile, my maternal grandparents lived with one of my mom's sisters. There wasn't really a question of whether that was how things were going to work.
On the other hand, as we've all aged, we seem to have moved to the single-generational model. I've moved closer to my parents but they're in their 80s and still live on their own. But most of my maternal relatives (the more recently immigrated side of the family) are still multi-generational.
*At the very end of her life, my grandmother moved to an assisted living facility. That didn't go too well** and we were working on moving her back and finding some in-home care arrangement when she passed away. It still makes me sad to think about it.
**I had moved away but I would say it was a combination of being too healthy in some ways and not healthy enough in others.
31: That's OK, most guys just leave her hanging on the tree.
I guess I'll be living in a multi-generational household in a few weeks. I'll let you know how it goes.
Probably better than a multigenerative AI household.
Re: housing and the eclipse. Map of where airbnb's are fully booked nect week.
https://twitter.com/mikesimonsen/status/1775683012598079639
My daughter and granddaughter moved in with us a year ago this month. We have a big finished basement, but everyone shares the kitchen, and entrance. I like it, but I'm not sorry when grand goes to bed at 7:30.
Multigenerational housing is absolutely the norm in my wife's village. An apartment within a house, more of less as described above. Her father's childless godparents lived in the apartment until she left home (and they died). My brother in-law moved into the apartment space when his marriage broke up, living with my in-laws the last 2 decades of their lives. I wouldn't have wanted to live with my in-laws, but I get it. Anyhow, the same pattern is replicated in many instances in her extended family.
Crossing threads, 34, 39, and similar remind me of teo's:
Another thing about Covid that I think is underappreciated is that most of the actual dying when it was real bad happened in hospitals with no visitation allowed, so most of the public didn't get a real sense of how bad it could be. I think this played some role in the general resistance to precautionary and mitigation measures.
40: I appreciate the shoutout but I don't actually see the connection. Could you elaborate?
I'm thinking people's attitudes to covid might have been affected by having their elderly parent/s in their houses, potentially or actually getting sick and dying in their houses, after likely being infected by them or their kids*. As opposed to the grandparents living in a separate bubble of old people, whether in their own houses or retirement communities/whatever.
*Or, having their kids/grandkids in their houses, and getting infected by them.
And the link in 4 is also relevant.
4 link includes this picture of an interesting molding (accolade?) above a gateway. Can anyone shed light?
An ancient Egyptian design? Art Deco?
Oh, totes Egyptian, also moldings on the pillars, in shadow. But why?
42: Ah, okay, thanks. That does make sense.
45: Yeah, definitely Egyptian in inspiration. I don't know how much more explanation you need? Egyptian was definitely one source of inspiration for Art Deco which may in turn have influenced this development. (There was also a whole Egyptian Revival architectural style in the nineteenth century. Very little of it is extant today, but it did include the NYC jail known as "The Tombs" which has led to that nickname being used for successor buildings down to the present.)
It's known as Egyptian Revival https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revival_architecture
My favorite example (I've always thought of it as Egyptian Gothic) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grove_Street_Cemetery#/media/File%3AMMDA-Photos_-_Grove_St_Cemetery%2C_New_Haven%2C_CT%2C_USA.jpg
I was dimly aware Art Deco took elements from all over, and that there was a lot of Art Deco in LA. What surprised me was such decoration on what looks like a pretty humble building.
50 is great. Though Osiris may have opinions on the inscription.
52 recently learned about Art Deco in India, there's an archaeologist/architecture historian who's been working on it here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco_in_Mumbai
15: there are people in the town next to me with 1 acre lots that could be had for $500k a few years ago. Lots of contractors in the area and young families. Most of those 1 acre properties would be half trees. Pretty moderate place politically.
54: I was dimly aware of Art Deco because it was laso big in Mossberg, presumably in parallel with Mumbai.
They should just build 10 houses on each lot.
In fact, since you only need a 2,000 square foot lot to keep chickens, there's no reason not to divide an acre into 20 lots.
Maybe they have different rules about chickens?
We have a fabulous "Egyptian theater" downtown, and the high school has similar elements. It makes dance recitals and concerts pretty great.
Before everyone gets too in love with multigenerational housing, I feel like pointing out that "caregiving is right on site" usually means "one of the women will do it", either as free day care or free elder care. It's not a substitute for memory care or assistance or childcare. I'm not expecting that Pebbles' ambitions will be to take care of my arthritic ass in 20 years, and I'm not doing 9-5 daycare in my 60s.
Before everyone gets too in love with multigenerational housing, I feel like pointing out that "caregiving is right on site" usually means "one of the women will do it", either as free day care or free elder care.
Well, "free" in what sense, though - in some cases, like 5, the tradeoff is free elder care in exchange for rent-free housing, and/or free elder care now in exchange for free child care a few years ago. Plus the elders in question are still pretty capable - some mobility issues, chronic illnesses, but they're mentally competent and can look after themselves. They don't need bathing or hauling out of bed.
Is your dad still hill walking, ajay?
Having recently overseen payments for memory care, I know the cost is many times local rent. The cost was closer to an entire full time income after taxes for an experienced professional.
There's also a gentler transition between independence and dependence possible with multigenerational housing. My dad no longer drives, and is living alone in a house in a completely unwalkable area; he's completely dependent on Uber and grocery deliveries. It would not take much of a deterioration in his health to be a real emergency, but if he were living in some sort of auxiliary dwelling unit with me or my sister, we could keep him going on a semi-independent basis much more easily.
And I'm told that buying long-term care insurance is not without difficulty and you need to be sure the company won't go broke when you need it.
67: We were worried about that, but for us that period only lasted a few weeks.
Yes, my parents put a lot of effort into getting LTC insurance before they needed it at all.
Is your dad still hill walking, ajay?
Oh, yes. Or walking, anyway. Not so much on the steep slopes.
It is only in the last couple of years that he has reluctantly admitted that his days of bothying may be over, and I think this is because all the friends he goes hillwalking with are now extremely reluctant to join him because they have e.g. artificial hips etc.
(In that buying the insurance only when you need it guarantees unavailability or a sky-high rate.)
If that happens to Shakira, at least the new hip will be able to lie.
68: yes. Like I thought about trying to get it, and I didn't because I don't trust the companies to stay in business when I might need it
I hear a lot about family and caregiver engagement which mostly seems to be about getting free care or paying really low wages to family caregivers.
For some folks, it's also free or reduced cost childcare. I have stronger feelings about the elder care than I do about childcare, though ai generally support social insurance models for all of this stuff. Because I want people who have kids to be supported generously, but it still bugs me more when nursing homes go after the assets of adult children.
67 very good point. If my parents both completely lost the ability to drive and indeed to cycle, it wouldn't actually mean much change in their independence or day-to-day lifestyle - they live in the centre of a highly walkable and transit-rich city.
73 might not be too far off. A contemporary of mine rather startled me last year by saying that he'd had both his hips replaced at age 46. Apparently the doc had said that he was at high risk of arthritis or something, and had recommended he get them done now while he was relatively young and healthy and would heal fast.
Hurt like hell for a bit but he's fine now.
It is striking me with increasing force that the tradition of retiring to the country is extremely silly. When you start to get old, you decide it's time to live in a place where there's crap public transport and you need to be able to drive to get anywhere, the ambulances take ages to come, your local doctor is miles away, and your local hospital is even further off, you're miles away from your family, and all the leisure options involve vigorous physical activity? No! Retire to the centre of the city where everything you need is within easy walking distance!
71.2 Glad to hear it, that's like my dad, he still golfs 18 holes two or three times a week and would walk it if his golf partners were still capable of it.
It would make more sense if the expectation was to have at least one live-in servant in your country home, and the city was full of smog and mud.
72: I'm worried about picking a company that will last so that if I pay for 30 years, the company is still there.
72: this is why it needs to be "mandatory" and universal, I.e. funded through taxation.
Anyway, I want to retired to a condo in Pittsburgh in either North Oakland or Shadyside because I can still walk around to stuff even if I'm drunk or old. I could wander to the Carnegie and appreciate either art or dinosaurs. Or die in a collision with a 19-year old on an electric scooter.
I'm worried about picking a company that will last so that if I pay for 30 years, the company is still there.
Insurance companies are pretty long-lived and your state guaranty association should provide at least some cover if your insurer fails. As a policyholder you will also be the senior creditor during the insolvency process.
67: absolutely. My grandma is in an independent living community now and my aunt had been amazing driving her everywhere for a few years. The community just provides meals and a cleaning service and med delivery. Basically a dorm for 90+.
Utah has a lot of multigenerational stuff and it works mostly OK, but it's also a lot of mom finishes raising the kids just in time to be full-time childcare for the new grandkids because both parents are working jobs or in school. It's a serious difference in norms. I think this only works if you have enough kids to shift the burden around a little.
84: A lot of them have dropped the business in the US. Like, if your homeowner's insurance drops you, you need to find another policy. The problem is that a new company might not take you when you are older, so if you had saved the money, you would at least have that to fall back on.
77: my grandparents moved to the country and Grandma hated it, because it is boring and far from the shops.
My younger friends' version of this is dreaming of a big property to share with friends - usually with lots of space. So a bunch of tiny homes and a big communal kitchen, or a distressed mansion or large house so you can hide out when you're feeling introverted, but have a friendly gathering place when you're longing for connection.
Other common jokes are that of course polycules are everywhere - how else could they afford to buy housing. (Etc.)
86: My uncle was explaining things to me and I kind of glazed over, but that is more accurate than my casual "not be there." To be clear, my uncle thinks I should still get the insurance. I should just check around a bunch. Which means I've put it off.
89 reminds me of my new year's resolution to start asking "So are you guys a polycule?" whenever I think it would be most awkward.
A contemporary of mine rather startled me last year by saying that he'd had both his hips replaced at age 46. Apparently the doc had said that he was at high risk of arthritis or something, and had recommended he get them done now while he was relatively young and healthy and would heal fast.
My brother got his first hip replaced in his mid 30s, and the second a few years later.
I'm pretty sure that the US government will be around, in some form, at least until I'm ready to retire. If only there was a way we could rely on that long-term stability as a way to guarantee security in retirement. That seems like it would be a better system than rolling the dice with private insurance companies.
My cousin's husband got his hip replaced in his fifties and it worked fine except that now he says stuff like "Democrat-run cities."
OT: 'similarities between U.S. and EU border control and the resulting human rights abuses against people on the move, such as "being held in cage-like facilities, systemic violence in reception and detention centers, physical assaults, illegal deportations."'
I'm not doing 9-5 daycare in my 60s
That's what my dad said, and ten years later he is a wholly owned subsidiary of his two local grandkids, from what I can tell. Something happens to (some) people. (Elke and I get the short end of the stick, though, because he truly, truly hates flying, and no airplane will ever be so adorable and loving as to override that instinct.)
I think I've mentioned before that lourdes and I are the remote offspring, while our younger sisters live close to aging parents, and while we both have a fair amount of guilt about this, there's no easy way to improve things since those aging parents are in three different states. (I guess we could move close to the one without a local child, but then again we definitely won't do that no way.)
89: the town next to me, there is a co-housing setup for 55 plus opening.
https://www.hagerhomestead.org/
It looks better than assisted living and a lot like what your friends are talking about.
I think we've discussed here how elder daycare is a bigger thing (supposedly, from what I've read) in the Rio Grande Valley than elsewhere, because of longer lifespan but poorer health, plus living with family as you age.
I'm an eldest/only daughter and definitely expected to be my parents' executor. They say they want to avoid having me do too much care because they've seen what their local siblings did for their parents.
But at the same time I'm doing daily work toward keeping my 41-year-old brother somewhat functional while he's in bipolar crisis, which today meant driving him to the psychiatrist and making sure she got my take on things and not just his, having his paperwork filled out and ready for her so he can extend his ADA leave from work again, plus work on getting approval for more long-term disability. The LTD people don't seem to understand how you could have simultaneous physical and mental health crises and have the first resolve but not the second, so they closed the case when his GI team cleared him even though he's been in the psych hospital since. (On the other hand, they're sending him so much money and I'm supposed to figure out how to bill him for some of what I've been doing before he blows the money on whatever and figuring out how to do that is work I'm putting off because it feels awful.)
What I really meant to say here was that I was already going to ask elsewhere whether once you get some (osteo)arthritis it just keeps getting worse and being an issue elsewhere forever or what. I graduated from sciatica PT today and don't know whether my insurance will approve an MRI when I'm not in agony anymore but also we know there's some spinal compression and arthritis, just not as much as in my neck. And meanwhile one knee gives out all the time and hurts, but I'd have to see a different doctor about that and I haven't gotten a referral yet.
I lived in multigenerational housing when I was young, in that my brother, my grandmother and I all shared a bedroom, and at night my brother and I would put away our desk/folding table so that my grandmother could unroll her sleeping mat. Like a lot of things, multigenerational housing arrangements are only attractive if you can afford an upgraded version.
The mom and dad of a friend of ours "M" moved down from Michigan and bought a house on M's street. M immediately got a job 8 states away and moved. M's mom is still here and sometimes M visits her.
There was an implied ", lol" after the second sentece of 101.
99: Osteoarthritis is a degenerative thing, but the symptoms can go away with treatment or for the fuck of it. Especially if minor. The knee could be something else if you haven't had it imaged yet.
Anyway hope you and your brother feel better.
100: Like a luxurious sleeping mat.
My younger friends' version of this is dreaming of a big property to share with friends - usually with lots of space. So a bunch of tiny homes and a big communal kitchen, or a distressed mansion or large house so you can hide out when you're feeling introverted, but have a friendly gathering place when you're longing for connection.
This is exactly the description of where my aunt in WA moved about 25 years ago. There's about 15 households, each with a little flat, and in the centre there's the old farmhouse which is now the "common house" and has all the guest rooms, the big kitchen, the games room, the TV room etc. You're expected to eat in the common house at least once a week and there's a rota for who cooks. Fairly age-mixed as well, from what I remember - families with young kids as well as older couples. It's an old farm but fairly close to town so you can commute to work.
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One of our most extremely useless VPs just got a job at a more prestigious university, and it caused me to reflect: a good thing about a mediocre institution is that when people are failing upwards, they pass right through you.
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I'm a kidney stone.
IMHMHB, there's a cool "co-living" community in Portland, built for profit but by an individual local developer - a cluster of two-story duplexes, each divided left-right rather than top-bottom (identical structure to save money but well-decorated), structures arranged in a pleasingly organic curve, collectively owned garden and other green open space all around, one of the structures being a kitchen/gathering space on the ground floor and guest rooms above that.
There are some supersonic aircraft that can move as fast as the umbra will be moving across Texas (2,600 km/h) but nothing that could match it in Maine (4,800)
They have brought in someone from U of North Texas to teach about bullying by microaggression. Which seems right because Dallas is really good at that.
111 how much do those places go for?
115: I forget. I think it seemed medium to me, it would have been on the high end for Portland, but not super-high. Maybe 500 or 600k. There is an HOA fee though, with the common area and the garage and so forth.
(Another development by the same guy in the same neighborhood had a sauna made of hempcrete!)
There are a couple places like that in our city, known as cohousing. The units themselves are just condos in a multi unit building but there's a large shared outdoor space and communal dining/cooking/recreation rooms. There's some kind of expectation about participating in communal activities. We looked at buying in 20 years ago but was too expensive for us then. The weird thing that sticks with me is that one of the units we looked at was a guy living alone in an 2Br unit and he had installed a urinal in his master bathroom.
I thought we were all going to move into the Halfordismo Mansion?
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107: can relate. Normally I don't even notice provosts but we had an ambitious guy rise through the ranks to dean, then to acting provost, then to provost, and just the worst dick you could imagine, punching down, kissing up, leaving a trail of lawsuits by faculty he'd mistreated (really!) and that same ambition blessedly carried him out of here to a become president of a small campus in what is famously America's 50th best state for education. Phew!! No longer our problem.
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