Senior Housing: Design Changes for a Post-COVID World
- Keywords:
- senior living
- covid-19
- healthcare
Senior living facilities have been in the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic. Well-publicized outbreaks in a handful of communities have made prospective residents and their families leery of transitioning to an Independent Living (IL) or Assisted Living (AL) environment. Current residents are also still dealing with the physical and psychological ramifications that come with social distancing.
Operators expect that for the next couple of years at least, residents and their families will be sensitive to fears of the virus. The pandemic has created a new worst-case scenario: Will I be safe if another pandemic hits? With that, there’s a shift in expectations, both with the perception and execution of facility cleanliness.
Residents will not, however, accept any reduction in features and programs that take care of their overall wellness, and that includes their need for social interactions.
Physical Design Changes
Businesses of all types will place a heightened emphasis on health and safety. For senior living facilities, the most immediate adjustments will involve changes in physical specifications.
Jack and Jill bathrooms. The operators we’ve talked to say this layout, in which two independent resident rooms share a bathroom in between, will likely be a casualty of the pandemic. Frequently found in memory care facilities, it’s often the least expensive room option.
The flip side of this is that by removing a low-cost housing option, operators may no longer be able to cater to residents with limited budgets. From a marketing perspective, operators will have to take into account that their “as low as” rate will be higher than before.
Clean rooms. We’ll likely see more facilities create so-called clean rooms, or areas with glass partitions, that are cleaned by staff between each visit This is a relatively easy fix, as facilities can adapt an existing room for this purpose. While this is in reaction to the coronavirus, operators don’t see COVID-19 as the last public health issue they’ll have to contend with, so being prepared to implement clean rooms is a productive long-term solution.
Hospital-grade HVAC systems. In the context of protecting residents from an airborne virus, filtering outside air is a more effective method than recirculating indoor air. The downside is that it’s less efficient, which could be a factor for operators looking to achieve or maintain LEED certification.
Technology. Thermal scanning to detect resident health issues will likely become standardized. We could see online ordering solutions made available to reduce residents’ trips to stores. Also, robotic cleaning tools will likely become more widely adopted since they eliminate human interaction in the rooms for maintenance. This, in addition to current enhancements facilities have been implementing such as wearable technology to monitor residents.
New layouts. Designs that emphasize the use of separate “neighborhoods,” where residents can live, socialize and dine together in smaller groups, could become more popular. The neighborhoods could be cordoned off in the event of a future pandemic without bringing the entire community to a stop.
This is more readily achieved in tower-style facilities, in which each floor is its own contained unit. In a COVID-like situation, it would be easier to keep residents quarantined to their floors. For facilities with more garden-style designs, however, creating separate neighborhoods could result in requiring additional square footage.
A couple of additional changes could include:
- Outdoor communal dining areas for larger gatherings.
- WELL certification, which focuses on health and well-being in buildings.1 It’s mostly been employed in Asia in response to problems with pollution, but it could gain traction in the U.S. in reaction to the pandemic, especially considering developers can build to standard without a sizeable increase in expenses.
Ultimately, these changes will result in increased costs that would ultimately be passed through to the residents or their families. The key for operators is to do what’s necessary while making sure prospective residents and their families understand the value of the changes.
Communicating Your Efforts
Communicating your efforts, as well as your success during the pandemic, will be crucial to assuaging people’s fears. Demonstrate with statistics how your facility kept residents safe compared to seniors living outside a community. It can also help to tap into expertise outside of the industry. Hospitals, for example, are accustomed to communicable disease protocols and would have sound advice to offer regarding the safety of patients and their families.
The value proposition of senior living facilities has always been that they take care of people in the context of wellness. Developers will have to determine the right model in the event of another pandemic, one that strikes a balance between keeping residents safe while minimizing social isolation.
Imran Javaid, Managing Director, BMO Healthcare Real Estate Finance and Derek Zeller, Director BMO Healthcare Real Estate Finance contributed to this article.
Read more
Sanjay Arora, MBA, CFA
Managing Director and Regional Market Leader, Corporate Finance, Canadian Commercial Banking
Senior living facilities have been in the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic. Well-publicized outbreaks in a handful of communities have made prospective residents and their families leery of transitioning to an Independent Living (IL) or Assisted Living (AL) environment. Current residents are also still dealing with the physical and psychological ramifications that come with social distancing.
Operators expect that for the next couple of years at least, residents and their families will be sensitive to fears of the virus. The pandemic has created a new worst-case scenario: Will I be safe if another pandemic hits? With that, there’s a shift in expectations, both with the perception and execution of facility cleanliness.
Residents will not, however, accept any reduction in features and programs that take care of their overall wellness, and that includes their need for social interactions.
Physical Design Changes
Businesses of all types will place a heightened emphasis on health and safety. For senior living facilities, the most immediate adjustments will involve changes in physical specifications.
Jack and Jill bathrooms. The operators we’ve talked to say this layout, in which two independent resident rooms share a bathroom in between, will likely be a casualty of the pandemic. Frequently found in memory care facilities, it’s often the least expensive room option.
The flip side of this is that by removing a low-cost housing option, operators may no longer be able to cater to residents with limited budgets. From a marketing perspective, operators will have to take into account that their “as low as” rate will be higher than before.
Clean rooms. We’ll likely see more facilities create so-called clean rooms, or areas with glass partitions, that are cleaned by staff between each visit This is a relatively easy fix, as facilities can adapt an existing room for this purpose. While this is in reaction to the coronavirus, operators don’t see COVID-19 as the last public health issue they’ll have to contend with, so being prepared to implement clean rooms is a productive long-term solution.
Hospital-grade HVAC systems. In the context of protecting residents from an airborne virus, filtering outside air is a more effective method than recirculating indoor air. The downside is that it’s less efficient, which could be a factor for operators looking to achieve or maintain LEED certification.
Technology. Thermal scanning to detect resident health issues will likely become standardized. We could see online ordering solutions made available to reduce residents’ trips to stores. Also, robotic cleaning tools will likely become more widely adopted since they eliminate human interaction in the rooms for maintenance. This, in addition to current enhancements facilities have been implementing such as wearable technology to monitor residents.
New layouts. Designs that emphasize the use of separate “neighborhoods,” where residents can live, socialize and dine together in smaller groups, could become more popular. The neighborhoods could be cordoned off in the event of a future pandemic without bringing the entire community to a stop.
This is more readily achieved in tower-style facilities, in which each floor is its own contained unit. In a COVID-like situation, it would be easier to keep residents quarantined to their floors. For facilities with more garden-style designs, however, creating separate neighborhoods could result in requiring additional square footage.
A couple of additional changes could include:
- Outdoor communal dining areas for larger gatherings.
- WELL certification, which focuses on health and well-being in buildings.1 It’s mostly been employed in Asia in response to problems with pollution, but it could gain traction in the U.S. in reaction to the pandemic, especially considering developers can build to standard without a sizeable increase in expenses.
Ultimately, these changes will result in increased costs that would ultimately be passed through to the residents or their families. The key for operators is to do what’s necessary while making sure prospective residents and their families understand the value of the changes.
Communicating Your Efforts
Communicating your efforts, as well as your success during the pandemic, will be crucial to assuaging people’s fears. Demonstrate with statistics how your facility kept residents safe compared to seniors living outside a community. It can also help to tap into expertise outside of the industry. Hospitals, for example, are accustomed to communicable disease protocols and would have sound advice to offer regarding the safety of patients and their families.
The value proposition of senior living facilities has always been that they take care of people in the context of wellness. Developers will have to determine the right model in the event of another pandemic, one that strikes a balance between keeping residents safe while minimizing social isolation.
Imran Javaid, Managing Director, BMO Healthcare Real Estate Finance and Derek Zeller, Director BMO Healthcare Real Estate Finance contributed to this article.
What to Read Next.
BMO Focus: Betting Against the House? Canadian Real Estate Through the Pandemic
Douglas Porter | September 11, 2020 Economic Insights, Commercial Real Estate
Today marks not just the 19-year anniversary of that tragic day in 2001, but also six months of the pandemic (according to the WHO). On the latt…
Continue Reading>
Tell us three simple things to
customize your experience
