Where Should I Live When I Retire?

In 1998 much published writer and lecturer Bernice Kohn Hunt and her husband Morton moved 200 miles from New York to an unidentifiable retirement community in a Philadelphia suburb. At that time there were many fewer retirement communities than now, theirs had over 300 persons. Since then both facilities designed for full-service retirement living and literature about them have ballooned. But pioneering in this field was Mrs Hunt's 2006 WHERE SHOULD I LIVE WHEN I RETIRE? A GUIDE TO CONTINUING-CARE COMMUNITIES. *** The book is about continuing-care communities, also called lifetime or life-long retirement communities (they include assisted living, health care and even Alzheimer's units). Mrs Hunt limits her hands on descriptions to eight or ten facilities that she and her husband visited in New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. She has very strong prejudices or opinions about which type of retirement living is the best in principle for everyone, not just for herself. And not-for-profit, all costs including prescription drugs paid in advance, continuing-care communities constitute Mrs Hunt's gold standard. In addition they also need to be "certfied." *** Perhaps most strikingly useful in WHERE SHOULD I LIVE WHEN I RETIRE? is Bernice Kohn Hunt's Appendix A. Checklist for Comparing CCRCs, pp. 85 -92, As she lucidly argues, when you visit three or four facilities over several days, after a while details blur and you can't remember what you saw, liked or disliked where. The written checklist for each continuing-care retirement home becomes an essential memory aid, with topics from philosophy/mission statement through architectual style, square feet of house or apartment, exposure to light, kitchen, bathrooms, laundry, closets, monthly fee, waiting list and availability of a bridge home while your former home is waiting to be sold. *** There is perhaps too much in A GUIDE TO CONTINUING-CARE COMMUNITIES of the personal, often quirky reactions of the author and her husband to their new home. On the other hand, without her firmly stated attitudes toward liquor, towards fellow residents who just want to have a good time rather than do hard thinking or volunteering and much more, then Hunt's lists of dos and don'ts might become boring. All in all, WHERE SHOULD I LIVE WHEN I RETIRE is still a valuable pioneering study of an important part of America's evolving life styles. -OOO-