Regenerative Design in the Age of Coronavirus
When COVID-19 first exploded onto the scene in the U.S., among its first casualties were 35 residents of the Life Care Center nursing home in Washington state. Older adults, often with underlying chronic medical conditions, are particularly at risk for contracting the novel coronavirus – a risk that is compounded when they live in long-term-care settings with others who share similar vulnerabilities.
If anything good can possibly come of this pandemic, it may be that we as a country are shaken from complacency about how things are and begin to think about how things could be.
Building design is a good place to start.
When life becomes fragile and uncertain we want to be close to family and friends. This basic human desire has been borne out during the pandemic (with physical distancing caveats) but it’s a constant for the vast majority of our elderlies. Yet aging in America tends to be a socially isolating experience. There were more than 1.3 million residents of U.S. nursing homes as of 2015 (the last year for which data is available from the Centers for Disease Control).
This is due in part to the fact that people are simply living longer. It’s also because the U.S. lacks universal paid family leave, a truly dangerous rip in our social safety net made ever more apparent by COVID-19. A family leave bill has been introduced in Congress that has some bipartisan support: The Family And Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act (H.R. 1185/ S. 463) would provide workers with up to 12 weeks of partial income while taking family leave. That is not enough, of course, but it would bump the U.S. out of last place behind all other industrialized countries when it comes to helping families stay afloat during health crises or new parenthood. It would ease some of the stress of caring for an aging parent at home.
Architecture also has a critical role to play by providing better designs for intergenerational living and aging in place. Changes to Los Angeles zoning laws have made it easier to build Accessory Dwelling Units – the legal and regulatory term for a secondary house or apartment that shares the building lot of a larger, primary house. That’s great, but we also need forward-thinking flex designs that can accommodate aging parents inside the main residence.
What if, by design, we made it easier and even preferable for intergenerational families to live under a shared roof? Even before the onslaught of COVID-19, nursing homes already suffered from the plagues of boredom, loneliness, and helplessness. Intergenerational design could be good medicine for all of that.
