Page 17 - Green Builder Magazine May-June 2019 Issue

ASSISTED
LIVING
Staying TECHNOLOGY

Home

The baby boomer generation has entered the

period of life when it needs assistance to live

comfortably and independently. Just in time,

assisted living technology could offer a pathway

to what boomers want most.

BY MATT POWER
HANCES ARE, you’vealready encountered the frustrating condition. We can’t just wish it away, any more than
reality of aging in America, through a family we can deny the diminishment of age. Perhaps it’s best chronicled
member or on your own. And unless you’re by Shakespeare: We grow from “mewling and puking” infants to
very wealthy or live on a commune, it’s far “second childishness and mere oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans
worse than what you expected. taste, sans everything.”
The agony is real. As many Americans Must it end this way? Perhaps not, if we begin to combine smart
hit their seventies and on, they’re caught technology with building science to prepare homes for our golden
in a worsening spiral of home care costs years. Think of that Shakespeare quote. New tech can replace old teeth
and emotional angst. Here at Green Builder, with new ones, repair and augment aging eyes, vastly improve lost
we have sta whose parents pay $25,000 a hearing—and still many more advancements are forthcoming. No
C month (each) to reside in an assistive facility. longer housebound, seniors can use virtual technology to explore the
Their large retirement “nest egg” no longer seems su cient. universe or their old neighborhood, learn a new language, or ride in a
To worsen matters, one in 10 people over 65 has some form of self-driving car to visit a grandchild. Motion sensors, fall detectors, water-
dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. This makes living without regular use analyzers, on-demand home diagnostic tools—the list of potential
care all but unthinkable. And although researchers have made non-human “aides” goes on and on. But they must go hand-in-hand with
some progress in solving the dementia riddle, it’s still an elusive, better building design.

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