Good Samaritan Retirement Village
Updated: Sep 21
Where the price of entry is a commitment to serve
Imagine a bucolic neighborhood, nestled in the rolling Berkshire Hills, where stone walls abut old maples trees, just a few miles drive from Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow Dance. Like other communities for people over 55, houses and condos are individually-owned but close enough together that the association handles the roofs, the lawns, and the snow. In winter they keep the fire roaring in the Great Room and the library stocked with new releases. You enjoy other amenities, as well: pickleball courts, two pools, Bingo on Thursday nights, a card room where yentas can bicker about whose grandchild is more impressive.
The difference is that alongside the places to play, Samaritan Village, my ideal retirement village, has places to serve: A licensed daycare center, food pantry and soup kitchen, an art studio with eight wheels and a kiln, wood shop, and a lecture hall.
Part of the cost of admission is a signed commitment to volunteer in one of these community areas for a set number of hours each month, until you are physically unable. A retired ceramicist could volunteer to lead a weekly after-school wheel class to kids. A retired financial planner might teach a course on saving for retirement, filling the lecture hall with people from three towns over. Maybe a former corporate executive volunteers to manage inventory for the food pantry and a former school teacher hosts a story hour for toddlers.
Why I dream of a Good Samaritan Retirement Village
"Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom."— Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength
Working with many older clients, I am often inspired by their life experience and perspective. People's ability to draw on what they know keeps growing long after their raw mental horsepower starts to fade. In From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks explains that, although our fluid intelligence begins slipping in our thirties and forties, crystallized intelligence climbs through our later decades and does not diminish until very late in life, if at all.
Fluid intelligence: the ability to reason, analyze, and work out novel problems
Crystallized intelligence: the ability to use knowledge accumulated over a lifetime
And yet, just as experience and knowledge peeks, we tend to segregate older adults from the rest of us behind 55+ gated communities. Indeed, the majority of Americans rarely spend time with people outside their own age group other than family. This age segregation is a waste of opportunities for health, help, and longevity for us all:
For young people: Instead of presenting aging adults as people to be visited occasionally at a nursing home, the Samaritan Village would provide young people an opportunity to engage with older adults and learn from them and see them as the real, interesting people they might be. Young people who spend real time with older adults hold less ageist attitudes and less anxiety about their own aging, with real impacts on their own lives: those with more positive beliefs about aging, measured up to 23 years earlier, lived 7.5 years longer, after controlling for age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and functional health. The effect exceeded the benefits of either low blood pressure or low cholesterol, each worth four years or less.
For working age adults: A quarter of American adults now sit in the sandwich generation. The care they need does not exist at any price, because there is such a shortage of childcare workers and teachers. And arts education and other specials continue to having funding cut. If we invite back retired adults to help us out, we would take a small step towards filling this gap in care and education. If The Samaritan Village provided just a few tutoring sessions or craft classes per week, the community would benefit.
For older adults:
Most importantly, Good Samaritan Village would be a beacon for community-minded older adults to live among each other. Instead of living in a development based solely on your age and affinity for the selected climate, Good Samaritan would self-select for generous, community-oriented adults.
And it might extend your lifespan: Staying actively engaged in work or volunteering consistently proves to lengthen lifespan. In one study, healthy adults who retired one year past 65 had an 11 percent lower risk of death from all causes, after adjusting for demographics, lifestyle, and health. Adults who called themselves unhealthy showed a 9 percent lower risk, so the pattern held regardless of health. Volunteering produces the same benefits. Among adults over 50 who volunteered 100 or more hours a year, roughly two hours a week, had a 44 percent lower risk of mortality over the following four years, plus a greater sense of purpose and lower rates of depression and loneliness.
For your CPA!
Structure the community center as its own 501(c)(3), separate from the homeowners association, and part of what residents pay every month becomes a charitable contribution.
How would it work?
Every household signs a service agreement at closing, the same way buyers today sign HOA covenants about siding color and boat parking. Paid program directors and coordinators handle everything that requires a professional: background checks and fingerprinting for adults working with minors, mandated reporter training, curriculum sequencing so the Tuesday tutor knows what the Thursday tutor covered, insurance, transportation logistics, etc. Residents are responsible for actually leading the programming—whether it be teaching art classes or tutoring or lectures for adults. Programming would be at a reasonable cost to the community, ideally offsetting the cost of the paid directors. To keep people honest, volunteer hours are logged and used to offset an otherwise recurring amenities fee. If people stop volunteering, the increased amenity fee covers the additional staff needed to step in to fill the gap.
Does this already exist?
Not really. There are some communities that trade volunteer hours for reduced rent, primarily serving foster, adoptive, or special needs families, such as Hope Meadows in Rantoul, Illinois in 1994, where older adults get a break on rent in exchange for six hours a week helping families who have adopted children out of foster care. Agricommunities are sort of similar: they build a neighborhood around a working farm and sell the shared labor as part of the appeal. Some agrihoods do ask for a minimum number of volunteer hours. Many others fold the farm's cost into HOA dues and hire the labor out.
But I could not find a single market-rate community anywhere in the country where the service commitment comes as part of what you buy. Which, of course, means we need someone to build one. Unfortunately, I already have a business to run and so can't launch this project. But maybe this article will make it to the desk of someone who is thinking what do for their own next project. If it does, I will be checking in on my 56th birthday and, yes, I'd be delighted to lead the seminars on financial planning. Won't you be my neighbor?
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