Assisted living communities. Does Utopia exist?

[Yor]

I'm 56 and a C6/7 Quad. I've grown weary of Indiana winters and would like to relocate somewhere warm. I currently live alone in my own home and pay aides to help with up/shower in the morning and down at night. I've got some $ and my SSD income on top of that. I'm envisioning a condo type community with aides and a la cart services available.

I get along independently during the day and enjoy the freedoms of that.

I'm most definitely not talking about a nursing home type scenario.

Does anything like this exist?

thanks in advance, mark

I've been wondering if such a place exists for a long time. We are in such an extreme minority that there doesn't seem to be places that are specifically for groups of people like us. Instead they stick us in other places like nursing homes or something.

I've been pretty lucky in that I've been living in my own place for the most part for 35 years. I've moved a few times, and even recently shared a home with one of my CNA's and her girlfriend for three years, and now I'm back living in my own place again because they wanted to move out of state. Over the years I also got a lot of help from my family, primarily my dad but he's now 86 and can't do much for me anymore. I'm 50 myself and I don't know how much longer I can live like this.

Other than the first few years I was injured I have been privately hiring people the whole time and have been relatively lucky but since moving out of the house I was sharing with one of my CNAs my insurance company decided they wanted me to use an agency. Big surprise it hasn't gone very well. They had to fire the first agency after a few weeks because they were unable to consistently cover the hours. This second one has done somewhat better but they are running into the same problem at times. And with both of these agencies there's been a big language barrier issue. It seems like the large majority of agency workers here in Florida are Hispanic and don't speak English very well. It makes it very difficult to communicate with them, even if you utilize your phone as a translator. My caseworker keeps telling me to be patient and things will get better but I'm not very confident about that. But I'm giving it a chance for now.

At some point though, whether it's because of the subpar performance of these agencies, or because I simply just can't live alone anymore, I would be thrilled if there were place I could go to, where there were other people with spinal cord injuries or something similar, living together in some kind of facility with a trained staff. There could be activities and outings on occasion. I really think I, and certainly a few others I've met over the years, would really benefit from such a place. Giving up a bit of privacy and a few other things would be a very small price to pay for such a group orientated living experience with other people who share much in common with you.

I think places like this would make a huge difference for some people. If they existed.

[Sheri]

I couldn’t agree more! I’m para due to MS. I’ve started mulling maybe someday creating a group home of sorts for myself? We all know what we need but it doesn’t seem to exist. Even if it did, why would we want to pay a huge profit margin to some management company?

[renard]

Here is one of the larger CCRC directories.

And here you can search for those accredited by CARF. You can search on SCI programs more generally, also, so if you're unfamiliar with an area, they may have referrals for community facilities and housing options.

[easyway]

https://tenten.mb.ca/

[SCI-Nurse]

That looks great. I wonder what their waiting list is? In California it is VERY difficult to set up group self-managed living situations due to state laws. A few have been done by getting a waiver from the state, but even that is not easy to do. (KLD)