Assisted Living Directory Blog

My wife and I recently visited Las Vegas.  I had been there numerous times as a kid, but, on our recent visit, I was reminded of what an awesome city it is!   We can’t wait to go back.

One thing that always strikes me about Las Vegas is that there are plenty of seniors there – seniors having a good time (for the most part).   Seniors, retirees, and snowbirds can be seen at the shows, gaming, and eating great food at the plentiful dining options in and around Las Vegas.

There are also so many ways to stay healthy in Las Vegas – from golfing, to walking or running, to hiking and even just walking up and down the strip “people watching” (one of our favorite activities).     Las Vegas is also delightful most of the year in terms of weather – especially in the fall and winter when it is usually around the 70′s and 80′s.   Rarely do you see snow in Las Vegas.

So, because of all of the glorious things Las Vegas has to offer, we have now dedicated a page on our site to Las Vegas assisted living.   This page also encompasses Henderson – another great town in the Las Vegas area.

If you are going to visit Las Vegas, and want a recommendation for a place to stay – my wife and I love the Sunset Station hotel in Henderson.  It’s much less smoky than the other hotels, and is off the beaten path a bit (which we like).  There are a number of good dining options in the area too.

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!

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) before today.   I would like to think that I have included care and facilities on this site for all types of dementia, but I have failed to mention this type anywhere on the site.

It has an interesting and unique name, which is why I am surprised I had never heard about it.

I came across a great site today that is dedicated to Lewy Body Dementia.   Basically, this disease is described as “a progressive brain disease and the second leading cause of degenerative dementia in the elderly. The clinical name, “dementia with Lewy bodies” (DLB), accounts for up to 20% of all dementia cases, or 800,000 patients in the US. Over 50% of Parkinson’s disease patients develop “Parkinson’s disease dementia” (PDD), which accounts for at least 750,000 patients. (PDD is also a Lewy body dementia.)”

I don’t know yet if there are any assisted living facilities that care specifically for LBD, but I’ll try to find out and list them in the appropriate places on my site.

For those suffereing from Lewy Body Dementia, or for the loved ones of those struggling with this disease,  I apologize for not representing you on the site.   I’ll get to work on it.

Here is an interesting video clip that talks a little bit about the difficulties in diagnosing this disease.

We have spent several years compiling information for our site.   There are, by some estimates, close to 50,000 assisted living facilities in the United States, so getting them all in one place is a daunting task.  I don’t know if I will ever reach that goal with this site, but I will sure try.

We do have enough content on the site now that will allow me to start breaking out city pages from our state pages for facilities.   I have resisted doing this aggressively until I was comfortable that there was enough on the site to warrant it, and now I believe that on many pages I can do so.

It will be a slow process – I’d rather focus on quality and accuracy.  However, I think this will be useful to our visitors to see all of the facilities, as well as other useful information about particular cities on our site.

I have been managing the content on this site for about 5 years now, and I thought that I had covered most of the major cities in the US.  Of course, since there are over 40,000 assisted living facilities in the US, naturally I probably won’t have them all on this site.   Additionally, every day there seems to be a new facility being built somewhere in the US – or even several at a time.

I realized today that I had neglected to include assisted living for Auburn, Alabama on the site.   This is a pretty big town of close to 60,000 people (depending on who you get your information from).

One of the reasons may be that, relatively speaking, Auburn has a pretty small senior population – something like 6-7% of the total population for Auburn.  This, compared to the national average of 12.4% is pretty low.  Still, there are thousands of residents over the age of 65 in Auburn, so I think this was a worthwhile market to add to the site.

One reason this percentage may be a bit low is because Auburn is a college town.  I have noticed in my efforts to add cities and markets that any time there is a large college population in a town, the senior population is much lower in terms of percentage.

In the years that I have been working on this website, adding facilities and articles, it never occured to me that there is a segment of our population that (to me) seems under-represented in terms of assisted living.  This group is our military veterans.

There are almost 24 million military veterans in the United States, and almost 7 million of those veterans are over the age of 65.  I would think that there would be a lot more visibility and advertising for assisted living facilities for veterans – facilities that cater to people who have served in our military.

I know that there are numerous state-run facilities where veterans get benefits, but what I am talking about are facilities that are decorated as such – with flags, and military memorabilia on the walls, and a sense of community shared with other veterans.

This idea is also not to be limited to those who are seniors – but also available to veterans who have perhaps been disabled in the line of duty, who may also be younger, in their 20′s and 30′s.   I know that there is such a population.

I got the idea and inspiration to create a page in our directory for assisted living for veterans when I read a news article introducing a facility in Jacksonville, Florida that is brand-new, and caters to veterans.  I applaud Wakefield Place for creating an inspired home for our brave military veterans.

For more information on veteran’s affairs and assisted living, please visit www.va.gov

You can now leave a comment on any one of our articles on our main site.  We just added this today!

When we write an article about assisted living, we realize that we are not the only expert out there, and we would love to hear our readers chime in with their 2 cents!

I never really realized how big Fresno, California is.   I have most certainly heard about it many times, and I think that I have been through there a couple of times as a kid, but never really grasped that it is a pretty major city in California.   I suppose that it can be said that it is in a pretty good location too.   You are near wine country, the mountains and Yosemite, and just a hop and a skip away from Sacramento.   There is a pretty heatlthy senior population in Fresno as well – almost 50,000 residents are over 65!  Fresno also has the UCSF Fresno Alzheimer’s & Memory Center, which is a pretty big deal for many seniors considering assisted living in this area.

For these reasons, I have added Fresno assisted living to the site – a page dedicated to this great town.  My hope is that this page will become the difinitive resource for the Fresno area for assisted living and long-term care.

I think California in general is going to see a huge boom in the number of seniors in the coming 4-5 years.  The weather is one major factor that would attract more seniors, but California also has a very ‘friendly’ atmosphere when it comes to ‘alternative’ lifestyles, which may attract seniors that wouldn’t feel welcome in more conservative states.

Assisted-Living-Directory.com is committed to quality and safety. The facilities and services listed on our site should have a track record of safety, quality, and adherence to the law.
There is no way for us to monitor every facility or senior care service on our site, so if any of our users know of any ‘red flags’ or safety issues with any facility or service on our site, we will investigate and remove it from our directory. Just contact us with your information and we will promptly look into it.

We are very excited that we have added interactive google maps to our photo listings. These maps are robust, and can show a street, satellite, or hybrid view of the neighborhood that the assisted living facility is in. It also does a “pin” marker to show exactly where the facility is on the street.

This was a fun and slightly challenging project to do. Google mapping is a little “hairy” to figure out. You have to “geo-code” each address to find the latitude and longitude of the facility so it will map properly. Then, you have to figure out all of the different javascript coding that google provides to be able to do the mapping.

However, once it is all said and done, it really adds a nice feature to listings. You can see an example of google mapping in action here.