During a Richmond Cohousing business meeting, members play an icebreaker, stating something they want to accomplish or something positive about their week before passing the ball of yarn. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
1. Richmond Cohousing
Leslie Brown and her husband, Jack Collins, were living in a Jackson Ward house but were looking for something closer to the co-op community that they left behind on Staten Island.
Brown, who moved to Richmond to take a job as VCU’s budget and resource analysis director, likes to research, and she spotted a Meetup website mention of a multigenerational cohousing group that was forming.
“I went to one meeting up in Church Hill, and I said, ‘Wow, this is the coolest thing since sliced bread.’ ”
In cohousing, residents still own individual homes, but they share common spaces and community responsibilities, such as gardening or cooking. Individuals come together as a group to decide how their community will be run, creating rules and regulations governing everything from disputes among neighbors to what sort of residences will be built.
Brown and Collins moved from Jackson Ward into a Ginter Place condominium, which serves as their in-between home until Richmond Cohousing constructs their community.
Last month, the group got one step closer. They chose Dave McCormack, president of Waukeshaw Development, to oversee their project, which they want to locate no more than 5 miles from downtown. “We would like to be as urban as we can be given the real estate market in Richmond right now. We want the community to be easily walkable with the ability to bike to nearby amenities,” cohousing member Meg Koach Lessard says.
Cohousing, which originated in Denmark in the early 1970s, came to the United States through a community in California 25 years ago. Over the past few years, the number of communities in the United States has been on the rise. Richmond Cohousing is one of 13 similar communities in various stages of development in the state, according to the Cohousing Association. Another community, Piedmont Ecovillage, is looking to purchase land in Powhatan County.
Alice Alexander, the former executive director of the Cohousing Association, says that baby boomers, in particular, are looking to cohousing not just to be closer to neighbors, but also for the security of having someone look out for them. There’s also the added benefit of shared resources such as yard tools or kitchen appliances in the common space.
Beyond cohousing’s practical appeal, says Alexander, who lives in the Durham Central Park Cohousing Community in North Carolina, “It’s a lot of fun. We have a happy hour every night in [my] community, and it’s not like you have to show up. You make the decision, ‘Am I going to go tonight or not?’ ”
Ann Repp (right) volunteers to help Lu Wallace trim her garden through the Fan Village. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
2. The Village Movement
Villages are naturally occurring retirement communities in which residents pay for a membership that delivers services.
This national movement originated in Boston. Now a nonprofit with about 400 members, the Beacon Hill Village was established in 2002 and has allowed members to stay in their homes. Members can call Village staff to request assistance with everything from dog walking to snow removal.
In the Richmond region, the number of adults age 65 and older will double by 2030, according to the Greater Richmond Age Wave, a partnership between Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Gerontology and Senior Connections. By 2035, for the first time in the region’s history, the number of adults age 60 and up will outnumber school-aged children.
In 2012, the Fan Village began offering services to residents of Richmond’s Fan neighborhood. “I had read about Beacon Hill Village in Boston and thought the Fan would be a suitable location for this type of program,” says Barbara Hartung, the chair of the Fan Village. “We have many older residents living in older homes, and they want to stay in their homes if possible.”
In order to participate, village participants must be members of the Fan District Association, paying $25 per individual or $30 for a household annually.
The Fan Village currently has a network of more than 60 volunteers providing everything from simple gardening tasks to prescription pickup. Transportation isn’t provided, due to insurance costs, but the Fan Village does provide a transportation services list for those who need it.
Members of the Fan Village meet every second Tuesday of the month at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Best Café. Other social activities are held throughout the year.
Even something as simple as a daily phone call can make a huge difference in an older resident’s ability to remain in his or her home. “One of our volunteers calls a resident in her 90s every morning to make sure she is OK and doesn’t need anything,” Hartung says. “They have become friends as a result.”
Chickahominy Falls will be the region's first residential farming community. (Photos courtesy Cornerstone Homes)
3. Residential Agriburbia
The first of its kind in Central Virginia, Chickahominy Falls is a residential farming community being developed by Cornerstone Homes on nearly 200 acres in Hanover County.
“I was looking for something a little bit extra, a little bit special and a little more soulful,” says Cornerstone President Roger Glover, who has a background in farming.
There are 400 homes planned for the site along the Chickahominy River off Cedar Lane and Holly Hill Road. The majority of the homes cater to empty nesters. Ranging from 1,600 to 3,000 square feet, they will be one-story,
garden-style, single-family detached residences. However, plans also include 100 homes designed for millennials. Amenities designed to fit their needs and interests include a craft-beer pub, and farm activities will encourage connectivity between the ages. Walking and biking trails will also connect the clusters of residences.
The community’s farm-centric amenities include additional community gardens, covered pavilions, a farm stand, a professional kitchen and canning facility, and indoor conference facilities, creating opportunities for workshops, neighborhood get-togethers and feasts.
Site work is expected to begin this summer, with the first homes going up in early 2018. The estimated completion date for the community is in five to six years.
LifeStyle Builders worked with clients to fashion a home with two garages, each with its own interior entrance. (Image courtesy LifeStyle Builders)
4. Multigenerational Homes
Since 2011, Kevin McNulty and his team at LifeStyle Builders have become adept at customizing five of their existing home plans for multigenerational living. They’ve worked with mother and daughter dual purchasers and with buyers whose parents are coming to live with them.
With their “Elliot” plan, they’ve added a second garage with a separate interior entrance that leads to a private suite. The suites have included an extra laundry room and an efficiency kitchen without a free-standing oven or full-size refrigerator.
A full second kitchen is where Chesterfield and other localities in the region draw the line and require special-use permit approvals. “As demographics change, it would be nice to find a way to accommodate [that kitchen],” says McNulty, who has seen the issue tackled successfully in other parts of the country.
A record 60.6 million Americans, or 19 percent of the population, lived in multigenerational households in 2014, and the number keeps growing, according to the Pew Research Center.
Semi-custom builder Toll Brothers, now building in Fredericksburg and Northern Virginia, offers a multigenerational house plan with an expanded bonus room off the side of the house, often with its own entrance, bedroom and kitchen space, says Kira Sterling, Toll Brothers’ senior vice president and CMO of marketing.
“The multigenerational home really is terrific,” Sterling says. “It’s one that can accommodate all sorts of things, boomerang children moving back … there’s space for an older parent or grandparents to move in.”
The Richmond Friends open their age-in-place program to anyone over 50. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
5. Quaker-Led Support for Aging in Place
The Richmond Friends Meeting, a congregation of Quakers in the Richmond area, has set up a support group to address the needs of older community members. For a $25 annual fee, services are offered. Member Cas Overton says you do not have to be a Quaker to participate, as the purpose is to offer assistance to the community as a whole. She notes that anyone over age 50 is eligible.
Overton says the group recently lost a 93-year-old member, but they were able to help his wife with his care. “She was able to keep him at home with our support,” Overton says.
There are about 30 members, all of retirement age. They assist each other with varying situations and needs, but mostly with simple household tasks, meals, transportation, even social visits. Every year, each member will fill out a form letting the group know what tasks they are willing and able to do.
There’s also an educational component during which the members get together about twice a year to listen to a guest speaker who addresses aging-related topics.
The group has also discussed future housing arrangements. “We’ve thought about coming together to find a home to live in,” Overton says. “Many of us are single and do live in our own homes still.”
Kat Stoneman (below) is leading the charge for more housing alternatives near Bellevue. (Photo by Justin Vaughan)
6. On a Crusade: North Sider Searching for the Right Fit
Kat Stoneman is concerned about where she will end up in the future.
While helping her 91-year-old mother select the right retirement community, the North Side resident realized the options were more limited than she had thought.
“My original thoughts were as I get older and my husband and I can’t live in our own home, what would our options be?” Stoneman says. “And the options that I was looking at were very few.”
Her mother currently resides in Westminster Canterbury Richmond, a continuing care retirement community also located in Richmond’s North Side. At age 61, Stoneman is not ready for a retirement community herself, but after two knee surgeries over the past five years, being able to stay in her current Bellevue neighborhood is at the forefront of her mind.
Wanting to take action and assist her neighbors who are in a similar stage of life, Stoneman has started a community group that held its first meeting in late March. “I’m on a crusade for something different, and that crusade has forked into two different ideas for senior living options,” she says.
The first is the idea to use public and private lands specifically in the North Side to construct a new senior housing community. The other idea explores the possibility of implementing the village model.
Stoneman says the group comprises like-minded individuals who live in the North Side and love the Bellevue area because it’s convenient to culture, nearby restaurants and shopping. Other amenities are a short drive away; and if driving is an issue, public transportation is also available.
“We’re people wanting to stay in the community,” she says.
