Housing Options

By Marianne Delorey© “Due to state laws, the restaurant was nonsmoking, which as a nonsmoker pleases me, but as a Libertarian it pisses me off....

Let’s face it, moving is hard for anyone. For an elder, especially one leaving their family home, moving involves extraordinary courage, a financial commitment, and a lot of hard work. Not everyone gets to plan their move, but great things happen when they are able to be part of the process. Here are a few of my favorite stories about the people who have done this.

By Marianne Delorey As a provider of housing, I know that my biggest competition is not the fancy new apartments down the street. It is...

By This article is part of a series intending to open the discussion of which Central Mass towns are most elder-friendly. This article focuses on...

This table summarizes the last several articles about each of the towns in Worcester County and how they compare on elder friendly characteristics. The higher the ranking, the more elder friendly the town was considered to be in each of the areas studied. The areas included the extent of medical facilities available in the town, how affordable the town was, how extensive the transportation options were in the town and how well funded the senior center was.

Robert Frost once wrote a poem called “Mending Wall” in which the property line between neighbors brings them together and yet keeps them apart. This seeming contradiction is seen every day in elder housing. The best neighbors come together in times of need, but are aware of their own limits, or boundaries in the relationship.

By Marianne Delorey© I’ve been in property management for most of my adult life. It is a great job and one that has provided me...

Two well-known social psychologists named Alter and Oppenheimer did an experiment in which they had groups of people take a quick, three-question intelligence test called the CRT. This particular test is rigged so that the most obvious answer is wrong. Eighty-three percent of people miss at least one question. However, the researchers found when they made the test harder, people did better. They did this by writing the test in a font that was difficult to read. The conclusion the researchers drew from the experiment is that making people slow down their reading made them make fewer mistakes. In this case, less speed made for more processing time, which in turn led to more careful answers.

By Marianne Delorey A large part of our success in aging well has to do with how we cope with changes in our bodies.  All...

By Marianne Delorey Moving day has come, your toothbrush was swept into one of the many boxes before you. You start unpacking the boxes, picking...