Creating Intentional Communities for the Second Half of Life July 28, 2006

Innovative housing models that emphasize close-knit community life are springing up around the country. And they are finding special appeal to midlife and older adults. Mutually enhancing and supportive housing arrangements may enable people to live longer and more independently in their own homes, stay socially engaged, mix with multiple generations, stretch retirement savings, and enjoy the benefits of stimulating exchanges of ideas and experiences with neighbors.

These housing models range from the village-like intentional ?cohousing? communities with shared commons areas such as guest quarters, dining halls, garden spaces, daycare centers, and on-site cooperative health care, to so-called ?naturally occurring retirement communities? or NORCs that are existing neighborhoods in which longtime residents have ?aged in place,? and in which resident pull together to establish support services to enable them to remain in their homes.

?Creating Intentional Communities in the Second Half of Life? is a one-day conference designed to showcase several kinds of housing innovations that may serve as alternatives to large scale retirement communities, age-qualified gated communities, or to anonymous life in existing single-family neighborhoods or condos and apartment complexes. These intentional communities are not for everyone. But we at the NC Center for Creative Retirement, a university-based laboratory for educational innovation, community leadership, and research, are responding to frequent inquiries about alternative housing options. We are not promoting any particular form, rather through this conference we invite participants to explore the pros and cons of these emerging models.

We have assembled a faculty of national experts who not only know about these models, in several instances our experts actually live in co-housing communities, in spiritual communities, and in NORCs. So if you have been intrigued about whether one of these models is for you as a future inhabitant or for you as a designer, developer or provider of services, we hope you will consider attending this conference.

Schedule:

- Ronald J. Manheimer, Ph.D.
Executive Director and Research Associate Professor of Philosophy
North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, UNC Asheville

- Communes for Grownups: Emerging National Trends
Ben Brown, Journalist [wrote the first AARP article on Elder coho]

- Elder Cohousing: What It Is and How to Get One Started
Zev Paiss and Neshama Abraham, Co-Founders, The Elder Cohousing Network

- Building Affordable Green Communities
Don Tucker, AIA, President, ECO Housing
- Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs):
Variations on A Theme ? Panel of Experts, Neshama Abraham, Moderator

- How We Created an Affordable, Beautiful and Spiritual Community: ElderSpirit
Dene (Geraldine) Peterson, Founder, ElderSpirit

Official Website: http://www.unca.edu/ncccr/CIC_conference/index.htm