Continuing Care Retirement Communities – Retirement Living, Looking to the Future

Retirement can be an exciting time. It is a time to rediscover the things you enjoy in life. You now have time to branch out and try new things, make new friends, and explore those things you have wanted to learn about. It is time to relax, enjoy life, and become revitalized. Retirement is also the time to look ahead and plan where and how you want to live later in life.

One thing to consider is, do you want to live in a retirement community? If you do, what type of community do you want to be in? Retirement communities come in all types, shapes, and sizes. Some offer a wide variety of services, while others are quite narrow in service offerings. Reedley is fortunate to have two retirement communities and now they are more similar than different. Both have always offered independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing.

Recently, Sierra View Homes obtained a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) License. Licensure means the community has proven its financial and organizational viability to the State Department of Social Services. The services that Sierra View Homes will offer are the same, but now the community will receive credit for what it has been doing all along. A continuing care retirement community assures the residents who sign up that there will be a caring place for them for the rest of their life. A CCRC offers a range of services and amenities; all geared to helping the residents stay healthy and independent for as long as possible. The biggest advantage is that the independent residents have access to assisted living and skilled nursing care.

I found that there are different ways retirement communities can be licensed as a CCRC. Most have all care levels; Independent Living, Assisted living, and Skilled Nursing Care all covered by the CCRC license. Sierra View Homes went through a vigorous review because of the independent apartment section of the campus. All of the independent apartments had to be placed in a wholly-owned subsidiary called Sierra View Residences, LLC. Sierra View and Monte Vista Grove in Pasadena are the two communities that have this variance in their CCRC license.

Each continuing care retirement community has a contractual obligation to move residents from the different service levels. Most, but not all, CCRCs have entrance fees. These fees are not uniform. As you look at the different retirement communities, it is very important to ask how much their upfront fee is. Also, ask if the community also offers a reduction in the market rate of their monthly care fees. Sierra View Homes has chosen to have no entry fee at this time.

The number of people living in CCRCs nationwide keeps increasing. Each community offers general services for their residents and also has unique services that create the atmosphere of the community. The availability of programs and activities designed to support each resident’s health and well-being are a big draw. The idea of aging in place, since each CCRC member will be able to use the community’s different levels of care when they need those services, offers peace of mind.