Demistifying Senior Living Typologies with Jane Rohde.
Ask most people what senior living looks like, and you’ll hear the same three answers: independent living, assisted living, and memory care. It’s an understandable shorthand—these are the categories that dominate the market and the conversation. But they represent only a fraction of what’s actually out there, and for many families, the best fit might be something they’ve never heard of.
The senior living landscape has been quietly evolving for decades. Across the country—and around the world—designers, advocates, and communities have been rethinking what it means to age well outside of the traditional institutional model. From household-scale environments that replace long corridors with shared kitchens and living rooms, to membership networks that help people stay in their own homes with the right support at the right time, the alternatives are not only viable—they’re producing better outcomes.
Rethinking the Default
The Continuing Care Retirement Community—the CCRC, also called a Life Plan Community—has long been the gold standard for people who can afford it. It offers a full continuum of care under one roof, from independent living through skilled nursing. But the financial barrier to entry is significant: large deposits, monthly fees, and the assumption that a resident has an asset to sell. For middle-market families, the math often doesn’t work. And for people who simply don’t want to live in a large campus-style community, it’s not the right answer regardless of cost.
That gap—between what most people know and what actually exists—is exactly what deserves more attention.
When the Environment Becomes the Intervention
One of the most powerful shifts in senior living over the past two decades has been the move toward smaller, household-scale models. Rooted in the recognition that nursing homes were designed after acute care hospitals—not places anyone would choose to live—the Small House and Greenhouse movements replaced institutional settings with homes. Real ones: 8 to 12 residents, a shared kitchen, a living room, assigned caregivers who know each person by name. The results have been striking. When people are treated as residents of a home rather than patients in a facility, health outcomes improve in ways that clinical interventions alone cannot replicate.
Staying Home, With a Safety Net
Not every solution requires moving into a new community. Models like Village-to-Village networks and wellness coordination programs are built around the idea that many older adults can remain in their own homes if they have access to the right services—transportation, home repair, help navigating benefits, and a reliable person to call. Similarly, programs like PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) wrap clinical care, social engagement, and logistical support into a single coordinated model, with a built-in incentive to keep people healthy rather than funneling them into institutional care. Adult day health programs, still widely underutilized, offer another layer of support that can make the difference between aging at home and an unwanted transition.
New Chapters on Old Campuses
A growing number of communities are exploring what happens when senior living meets higher education. University-based retirement communities give older adults access to campus life—classes, mentorship, athletics, the arts—while providing students with meaningful intergenerational connections. Some of these models have been operating quietly for over 20 years. Others are just getting started, often repurposing underused campus buildings to create something entirely new. The appeal is intuitive: purpose, learning, and social engagement are not things people age out of.
The Case for Belonging
Perhaps the most human insight in this evolving landscape is also the simplest: people age better when they feel at home. Niche and affinity-based communities—whether organized around cultural identity, faith, the LGBTQ+ community, or shared interests—aren’t about narrowing options. They’re about honoring the fact that comfort, language, food, and familiarity matter deeply, especially when someone is navigating cognitive decline or the vulnerabilities of aging. A cookie-cutter approach, applied uniformly across the country, will always leave people behind.
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These are just some of the typologies reshaping how we think about aging—and there are more. In the latest episode of ALC Chats, Jane Rohde, founder of the nonprofit Live Together and principal of JSR Associates, joins host Phoebe to dig into what these models look like in practice, who they serve, and why the conversation matters now more than ever.