Day 15/ Post 15
The coronavirus pandemic has caused such pain and turned our loved homes into a death chamber.
Everyone has the right to have a safe, secure, and healthy home to live, especially the elderly. Much of the world put our elderly in substandard living conditions.
There is an expectation because someone has lived into their 80s and 90s, they have had a life well-lived, and now their quality of life is not a social priority.
The COVID-19 pandemic has focused a significant spotlight on the living conditions of many of the long-term care homes. These long-term care homes are housing many of our elderly.
I could list how deplorable and understaffed many of these long-term care homes are, but you have eyes and ears, and you see what is happening. These conditions have been a wakeup call for many families.
No child wants to subject their loved ones, parents, or grandparents to this situation ever again.
Will there, in the end, be more focus on these long-term care homes? Yes.
Will conditions improve, yes, but short-term.
Don’t fool yourselves with the number of Boomers becoming the elderly. There is going to be an explosion in the world. The Boomers are going to age in conditions much worse than what we are experiencing now with the coronavirus.
As a Boomer, you need to take on personal responsibility now and make decisions for yourself before you are kicked to the health care system’s curb and left to die with no dignity.
Families must look in the mirror and ask how we can ensure our parents or grandparents are not left to rot in these long-term care facilities.
Living With Dignity Until Death Arrives
Will we get entirely away from long-term care facilities? No! But do they have to be the final stop for most of our ageing? Of course not!
Over the last few days, people have been stepping up with better ideas to home and take care of our elderly. I have put together a list of ideas I have had and seen posted on different social media platforms.
Being an investor in investment real estate gives me a little extra insight when it comes to housing.
Alternatives to Housing the Elderly
1. Multigenerational Homes: In countries like Japan, there 100-year mortgages, multiple generations living together, caring for each other, and family homes passed on from generation to generation.
2. Family Hobby Farms: Return to family farming, not the enormous farms of the past but areas of land large enough to build family homes on with shared resources, including family gardens and recreational areas.
3. Family Multigeneration Apartment/Condominium Blocks: Why not have family and friends pool their resources and buy apartment blocks for shared living. There are many different types and sizes of apartment/condominium buildings throughout all towns and cities.
4. Communal Living: The hippies of the 1960s might have been on to something, not for everyone—a strong community with shared resources through all stages of life.
5. Rethink How We Are Building Our Communities: As we age and retire, a large number of adults are snowbirds and head south, but as they age, the health care gets more expensive, or their physical capacity is no longer there to travel. People go south when it gets cold and come back when it gets warm.
When you think about the educational system, our college and university students go to school when the snowbirds head south, is there not an opportunity to think about shared housing. Youth takes over the shelter of snowbirds through the educational part of their lives.
Part of the youth’s employment during the late spring and summer months could be to work for the snowbirds as recreational leaders, drivers, companions, the amount of paid duties the youth could take on is endless.
I haven’t got this whole idea flushed out, but how we set up our communities needs to give these types of plans, some thought.
Ask yourself: Why do we have so many residental facilities sitting vacant six months of the year?
6. Healthy Living Longer: The benefits of daily exercise are well known and documented. If we have publically funded recreational facilities in many of our towns and cities, part of your old age benefits should be a free recreational membership. Why are we prepared to spend billions on housing the elderly and letting them sit inactive when we should be creating ease to exercise in their lives.
When you think of the cost of the coronavirus across the globe, there will never be anything more expensive then the price we are paying now, can we afford another global economic shutdown?
From Our Happy Place to Yours, Be Healthy, Be Safe Until Our Next Post
Post Views:
2,012
Related
