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Other assisted-care facilities can be a single building. Sunrise Assisted Living in Glen Cove, N.Y., is a 57,000-sq.-ft. soft yellow mansion with white gingerbread trimmings. The 83 seniors who live there each pay between $2,850 and $4,800 a month. On a recent day the buttery smell of fresh popcorn wafted through the vestibule. On the door of its suites, framed "memory boxes" display mementos of the lives of the people who live behind those doors--family photos, military dog tags and other souvenirs of long lives. In the special section for residents with Alzheimer's, one area is stocked with old tool kits, wedding gowns and a crib with several dolls, haunting but therapeutic props meant to engage the minds of people who have returned in fantasy to younger days when they worked and raised families. "We want to create pleasant days for these folks," says Jennifer Rehm, who runs the busy activity room. "This is not usually a neat place by the end of the day."
Keeping the elderly connected to the larger world is a big part of the idea behind assisted living. At the Munne Center in Miami, where family gatherings are featured, residents look forward to seeing their neighbors' grandchildren as eagerly as they do their own. Cecilia Struzzieri, 95, recently moved into Munne after living with her daughter. "I was getting feeble, and she wanted her freedom," Struzzieri says with a sigh. "Here I get all the attention I need." Miami developer Raul Munne, who built the place, is a Cuban immigrant. "Where I grew up," he jokes, "the elderly sat on the porch and fought with the neighborhood kids. It gave them incentive to get out of bed in the morning." But in the U.S., he says, "old folks are told, 'Don't open your door and go out at night. You might get mugged.' So, many of them have no one to talk to all day. They can only sit and watch television."
Later life lived this way doesn't come cheap. The Del Webb company, which made its name building luxury spas and retirement communities in the Sun Belt, last year opened a Sun City retirement community in Huntley, near frost-belted Chicago, an acknowledgment that seniors increasingly prefer to locate near longtime friends and family and not move to far-off sunny climes. Prices range from $130,000 for a single-level fourplex to $750,000 for customized estate homes that include home theaters, Jacuzzis and wine cellars, where an eminent Bordeaux can age along with its owners.
The typical assisted-living unit rents for about $2,000 a month, meals and basic services included. And prices can go much higher. Furthermore, assisted-living communities are not medical facilities, so their costs are not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, though 32 states do permit the limited use of Medicaid funds for assisted living. No wonder, then, that the average assisted-care resident has an income of $26,000 annually, while the typical retiree has $20,700.