New Homes for Old Folks

On a rolling 120 acres outside Buffalo last week, engineers started planning the construction of a $12.5 million apartment hotel and a cluster of small cottages, to be called Rockledge. It will have a pitch-and-putt golf course, lawn bowling, shuffleboard, roof garden, sun deck and an infirmary offering 24-hr, medical service. What sets Rockledge apart from other hotel projects is that it is designed to house only retired people--at a profit. Prices will start at $8,000 to buy a living room-bedroom apartment, plus a $112.50-per-person monthly charge for meals and maintenance. The builders of Rockledge are so enthusiastic about the vast new market to house the elderly that they plan to spend another $87.5 million to build similar projects in 14 other states.

Exploding Market. The number of private projects to provide housing for the elderly is growing fast; Social Security payments and company pension plans make it possible for more and more of the retired to live in such developments. One-fourth of the 15.5 million U.S. citizens over age 65 receive between $1,000 and $2,000 a year from Social Security and pensions. Their ranks will swell as pension plans expand and the number of those over 65 soars to 20 million by 1970. Recognizing the possibilities, the Federal Housing Administration has given the housing projects a boost; it guarantees up to 90% of mortgages on profit-making retirement homes.

With this impetus, hotels for oldsters are springing up from New York to Florida. There is Springvale-on-the-Hudson, with 160 terraced garden apartments, in Westchester County, N.Y., now being expanded to 375 units to keep up with demand. Rents start at $89.50 a month. The North Cape May (NJ.) Homes, a development of houses in a resort area, is selling at prices up to $11,000. Orange Gardens, in Kissimmee, Fla., has 215 houses at prices up to $12,000.

A Quicker Solution. In some areas, a quicker solution is being used: the conversion of old hotels. Oldsters like them because they are conveniently near bustling business districts. Two old hotel chains--the MacArthur with 15 hotels, and the Weaver with 21--have united to form a chain throughout the South and the Midwest, called Senior Citizens Hotels Inc. They are converting several floors of each hotel for retirement living. There is a recreation room and kitchen, ramps instead of stairways where possible. Rents range from $35 a month for a room without meals to $125 for a bath and three meals, supervised by a dietitian to make certain that meals are wholesome for oldsters. Says Senior Citizens' originator, Charles Little: "An attractive retirement hotel sells the children whose consciences might otherwise bother them when they move the old folks out of their homes."

One of the first to invest in retirement hotels is former Philadelphia Real Estate Man Charles S. Lavin, who has eight and is dickering for five more. He says he can make a money-losing 50-room hotel net $15,000 a year on an average weekly charge of only $20 for room and board. He trims overhead by having guests clean their own rooms and do all the hotel work except cooking for a tiny monthly wage ($10 in some cases). He says that his guests not only like to do the chores, because it gives them something to do, but do them well. Says Lavin: "My office manager at the Monterey Hotel (Miami Beach) is 89 and is as efficient as you could hope for."

Thus far there are only 65 retirement hotels in the country (some have failed because of bad management), far too few for the potential market. Hotelman Lavin sees a customer in every older person who is living by himself or with his children. A survey by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare showed that 34% of all those over 65 live with their children or friends--and one-half do not like it.

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