Assisted Living Directory Blog

It looks like Frasier Meadows retirement community in Boulder, Colorado is doing some pretty substantial construction! A friend of mine was in Boulder yesterday and took this photo from his I-Phone, and sent it to me (Technology never ceases to amaze me, even with something as simple as taking a photo from a phone and then e-mailing it). My friend Dave also asked me if I thought the assisted living market was seeing any effect from this bad economy. I told him that to some degree, probably yes – however, every day I see a new news article about how such-and-such assisted living company is pumping x-number of millions of dollars into a new facility….or how such-and-such company is showing profits, etc. I think it is an industry that is somewhat insulated from the current economic crisis – after all, you can’t stop aging, and Alzheimer’s, and especially now, it may be very difficult for family members to act as caregivers, as the responsibilities for work, or for finding a job are increased. Also, many families may be looking at having their homes foreclosed on, making them, and perhaps an aging parent, find housing elsewhere – which might mean assisted living. Anyways, that’s my 2 cents worth. Here’s the photo my friend took of Frasier Meadows:

Frasier Meadows, Boulder CO

I came across one of the most unique videos I have seen in a long time…and it is, for lack of a better word..creepy.   This excellent film called “I forgot my name” by a fellow named Matthew Cox uses animation to depict what is might be like for someone with Alzheimer’s to get lost in their own home…and the loss of self that encapsulates this horrible disease.  Matthew’s video is both hard to watch, and hard to not watch, if you know what I mean.  

I have been going through the site recently, looking for cities and areas that could use more representation for assisted living facilities.   As I was going through Florida, I noticed that I didn’t have much going on for the Jacksonville area.   I knew that Jacksonville area was pretty big, but I had underestimated it a bit.

I was surprised to learn that Jacksonville has over 800,000 residents, and over 10% of these residents are over 65 – or over 80,000 people.   Although this is slightly lower (percentage-wise) than the national average, that’s a big senior population!

I was equally surprised to see that it wasn’t as easy as it was for other cities to find a solid and diverse mix of assisted living facilities and services in Jacksonville, relative to it’s size.   There are a few companies that have a pretty good showing in Jacksonville – emeritus.com and brookdaleliving.com – but beyond that, there were relatively few privately owned facilities that were easily found in a simple search.   We even looked around on Youtube – often times facilities post video clips of their facilities – but no luck.

I know there are more – and maybe that’s where our site can come in – to help those assisted living facilities in the Jacksonville and Orange Park area to get the word out on what they offer.   We will list your service/facility for free, and you can include photos, video, and your services and amenities.   We also include google mapping on our facility listings.   So, we are “Calling all facilities in Jacksonville” to send us your information so we can post it on our Florida/Jacksonville page!

I have been going through the site trying to add cities that are under-represented in terms of facilities.  I don’t have an exact science on picking cities, but sometimes I just scroll through the site and see where there might be a defecit.    I was a little bit surprised that Los Angeles was not represented very well.  I think I only had one facility listed as of a few days ago.

Los Angeles has a lower than average percentage of seniors – only 10% as compared to the 12.5% national average.  Still, this is a huge number of seniors.   In addition, due to the great weather in California, the number of seniors in this area, including Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood will surely grow considerably over the coming years.   Currently, there are approximately 376,815 seniors in the Los Angeles area (according to the 2007 census for Los Angeles).

Our Los Angeles Assisted Living page includes many of the areas within the greater Los Angeles metro area, including Beverly Hills.   We will continue adding more assisted living and Alzheimer’s care facilities to this page over the coming weeks.   We encourage any facility administrator to send us your facility information, as well as any photos, or even video clips!  We’ll be happy to post them on our Los Angeles page!