By preserving certain cultural elements, developers are strengthening the bonds among seniors and creating a homey atmosphere
By Jeff Shaw
Today’s niche seniors housing communities target a variety of demographics segmented by everything from religion to hobbies to sexual orientation — anything that can unite a group of people.
Some developers are finding huge success by concentrating on a different kind of niche: ethnicity.
Priya Living has set its sights on middle-market Asian Indians, and its first two independent living communities have been so successful that the company is expanding from 46 units to nearly 200. Arun Paul, the company’s founder, estimates there is demand for 150,000 units of the product nationwide.
Aegis Living counts Aegis Gardens, a luxury assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing community marketed to Chinese-Americans, among its most successful communities and is currently building a second Aegis Gardens location.
Hispanic Housing Development Corp. builds affordable independent living in heavily Hispanic areas in the Midwest, and the company maintains 100 percent occupancy with a long waiting list at nearly all of its seniors housing communities.
Meanwhile, the National Hispanic Council on Aging is seeing similar trends in Washington, D.C., including at its own independent living community.
All the communities welcome residents of any ethnicity, but are built to serve the needs of certain groups.
The case studies highlighted in this article are proof positive that if developers know how to target the right market and demographic, demand for ethnicity-based niche communities can be extremely high.
Priya has personal connection
Arun Paul’s entry into senior living is a story many in the industry have heard before. He was searching for a seniors housing community for his parents, but he couldn’t find anything that suited them.
Paul was born in the United States, but his parents emigrated from India in their 30s. Among the traditional seniors housing communities “there wasn’t a good place for them,” says Paul.
“My parents, they’ve assimilated. Their English is proficient. But there are things that are important to them that they didn’t want to sacrifice — from food to activities to language. I couldn’t find anything that I thought made sense for them.”
So in 2009, Paul founded a seniors housing development company and named it Priya, a Sanskrit word that means “beloved.” The concept was to offer market-rate seniors housing to Asian Indian seniors.
Almost immediately, the demand for the product became clear. Before the first community in Santa Clara, Calif., was even completed in 2013, Paul was fielding calls from strangers about the project.
“To be honest, I didn’t realize the scale of this need,” says Paul. “There are about 3 million Asian Indians living in the United States today, and just over half a million seniors. There’s no product that targets their needs.”
The Santa Clara location and the second location in Fremont, Calif., which opened in 2015, total 46 units but have a waiting list of 1,300. The smaller communities were built to test the extent of the demand for the product.
There are two larger communities currently under development that will increase the number of units in the portfolio to nearly 200. All locations exclusively offer independent living.
The strong consumer demand doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Paul notes that the Asian Indian seniors population in the United States is growing at 8.2 percent per year compared with 2.7 percent annual growth for the entire U.S. population age 55 and above.
The San Francisco Bay Area, which Priya calls home, is already a market with a large Asian Indian population that continues to grow thanks to Silicon Valley technology companies hiring young Asian Indians who subsequently bring their parents to the area, says Paul.
Priya builds its communities to meet the needs of Asian Indian seniors in a variety of ways.
First, the company develops in areas that already have the infrastructure to serve the demographic, such as restaurants, grocery stores and community centers. “You have to be in the right location to make this work,” says Paul.
The communities offer programming to meet the needs of Asian Indians such as yoga, Bolly-wood movie screenings, meditation and group trips to temples or ethnic grocery stores.
Lastly, Priya targets middle-class seniors by keeping the units affordable. The base rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,400 per month, which includes all the programs. Services such as laundry, transportation, housekeeping and personal care are offered a la carte.
The residents help keep living expenses manageable by providing some services to one another. For example, a resident might buy groceries for a neighbor suffering from mobility issues.
“The more peer-to-peer service we have, the less third-party service we have to provide,” says Paul. “This is very unique to affinity housing. When people don’t have that sense of connection, they’re not going to go out of their way to help their neighbor.”
Ethnicity-based communities such as Priya will be mainstream options within a decade, Paul
predicts, citing “a tidal wave of new products by necessity” due to the demographic shifts in the United States.
His estimate of 150,000 units of demand applies solely to Asian Indians, and he notes that throughout the country there are dozens of similar populations who would live in these types of communities.
“We could go as fast as we possibly can, and I don’t think we could make a dent in even just the Asian Indian population,” says Paul. “It’s just the beginning for this type of product. We’re in the top of the first inning. In fact, we might only be in spring training.”
Aegis spots pockets of demand
Aegis Living took quite a different approach when it built the first Aegis Gardens independent living, assisted living and memory care community for Chinese-Americans in Fremont, Calif.
The company was already established as a developer of traditional seniors housing. Aegis currently owns and operates 29 communities in California, Washington and Nevada with seven more under construction.
Dwayne Clark, the CEO of Aegis Living who founded the company in 1997, saw an opportunity in the mid-2000s to capitalize on the Bay Area’s large Chinese population. Clark began development of the first Aegis Gardens community.
The fact that Clark is not Chinese, though, led to some growing pains during development. Aegis had to work with the city to change the community’s address because it originally contained numbers that are considered to be unlucky in Chinese culture.
The location is branded with green colors — a symbol of prosperity and wealth in Chinese culture — when Clark found out the corporate blue means mourning and death. The company had to source dishwasher-safe chopsticks.
Aegis Gardens even required some impromptu renovations when it was discovered shortly before opening that some of its features did not align properly with feng shui — the Chinese belief of using design and layout to harmonize an environment.
“We paid a lot of ‘stupid tax,’” says Clark. “I remember walking the property with the feng shui master, who told us the fountain had too many pointed stars on it and had to be ripped out. I had 500 people coming six days later for a grand opening, so we couldn’t demolish it. We had to saw the points off.”
Aegis formed an advisory board of prominent Chinese community members to work out the kinks, and the community opened in 2004.
But the success of the community was far from guaranteed in those early years. Aegis Gardens survived a competitive threat from a senior community located across the street and operated by a Chinese businessman. Aegis Gardens also endured a longer-than-expected lease-up period of 27 months. Those early setbacks are now a distant memory.
“It’s one of the most successful properties we’ve ever done — the average running census is almost 98 percent,” says Clark. “But building this type of community is not for the faint of heart.”
Although it could be considered a luxury product, Clark says middle-class seniors in California — “anyone who owns a house” — can afford it. Entrance fees range from $8,000 to $50,000, while rents range from $3,500 to $7,500, depending on the unit size and location. Like Priya, health services are offered a la carte at Aegis Gardens based on individual needs.
Employees at the community speak English, Cantonese, Mandarin and a variety of dialects. A master chef who knows the idiosyncrasies of China’s different regions prepares the menu.
Programs include mahjong tournaments, alternative medicine and calligraphy. Clark even credits the daily tai chi and qigong programs for improved balance among the residents, resulting in a fall rate that’s one-tenth of the national average.
The community also features many intergenerational programs, such as a preschool on site.
“We don’t want it to be a Chinese old folks’ home,” says Clark. “We’re making it a centerpiece of Chinese culture in the area.”
The average age of residents at Aegis Gardens is 87, while at the company’s other communities the average age is 82. It’s not clear if that’s due to the programming at Aegis Gardens, the culture or other factors.
Due to the success of the community, Aegis is currently developing a second location in Seattle, which also has a large Chinese-American population. The 110-unit community is scheduled to open in the summer of 2017. It will be the first Chinese-American seniors housing community in the Pacific Northwest, according to Aegis.
Clark already sees signs that the Seattle community will be just as successful as the Fremont location. The community is 15 percent pre-leased, and the groundbreaking was one of the most successful in the company’s history.
“It was the hottest day of the year at four o’clock in the afternoon, and there was a competing event nearby. We thought nobody would come,” says Clark. “We had over 300 people come to the groundbreaking.”
Aegis Living is already on the hunt for future sites to expand the Aegis Gardens concept, including locations in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, as well as California.
“Vancouver is a natural market,” says Clark. “There are half a million Chinese immigrants in Vancouver, and it’s just two-and-a-half hours up the road from our headquarters here in Seattle.”
Clark echoes Paul’s observation that the demand currently far outpaces the supply, with little development underway. Clark has even considered spinning off Aegis Gardens into its own company.
“It just makes sense for us to continue in this vein. There are thick pockets of Chinese-Americans all over.”
HHDC makes living affordable
Hispanic Housing Development Corp. (HHDC) is a nonprofit founded in 1975 to provide affordable housing communities in Chicago’s Latino neighborhoods. The concept was to rehabilitate housing and help struggling neighborhoods succeed without gentrifying the area.
HHDC’s affordable housing has become a catalyst for economic prosperity and community growth, says Dilia Camacho-Saeedi, the organization’s vice president of property management. “We rehabilitate and create new housing, employment and business opportunities that provide a socio-economic environment for communities to flourish.”
The company now owns and/or operates 40 properties in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana. It operates several affordable independent living communities, and utilizes HUD-funded service coordinators to provide residents with medical referrals, connections to food pantries and social programs such as parties and events.
The staff at all HHDC’s seniors communities are bilingual, and will even assist residents who visit a medical facility where the staff doesn’t speak Spanish. Funding for the organization comes from rents, donations and government reimbursement.
The housing is crucial to the areas in which HHDC builds, but building affordable housing is not an easy task, says Camacho-Saeedi.
“We deal with a lot of issues, a lot of regulations to maneuver through, and still provide quality, comfortable, caring, affordable housing,” she says. “And we have to make sure the budgets stay in the black so we can continue delivering the services. It’s not easy work.”
Although plenty of development is underway in the seniors housing sector, the vast majority of product is targeting upper-income seniors, according to Annette Zemlan, director of property management operations for HHDC.
“There are so many developers building, but most seniors can’t afford to stay in those communities,” says Zemlan. “The majority of our communities have stayed at 100 percent occupancy. Vacancies are usually only because a resident has moved into an assisted living or skilled nursing facility.”
Demand is so high for the communities, HHDC restricts the number of applications accepted to keep waiting lists manageable.
Building affordable seniors housing in neighborhoods that already have a high concentration of Hispanics enables seniors to age in place within their communities.
“Seniors want to stay within their own communities,” says Zemlan. “It’s where their children are, or where they themselves grew up.”
In many cases, seniors will stay in the same housing community in which they already live, but downsize from a three-bedroom unit to a one-bedroom unit.
But housing the Hispanic seniors population isn’t just about location, according to Dr. Yanira Cruz, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Council on Aging. Language, culture, family and food are ways seniors identify themselves.
“Hispanic seniors want the same thing that every senior wants,” says Cruz. “They want to age with dignity. They want to feel safe. They want to have a place where they can socialize with other people, play, pray and enjoy their golden years in serenity.”
In addition to its role as an advocacy organization, the National Hispanic Council on Aging operates Casa Iris, a 40-unit independent living community in Washington, D.C., where the organization is based. The community hosts residents from over 14 countries. “It’s a little United Nations,” says Cruz.
Casa Iris offers a variety of programming to appeal to its diverse residents, often gleaned from focus groups where the residents express their preferences.
Programs include Spanish movie nights and salsa dancing. Food coming into the community must be what Cruz calls “culturally competent,” meaning it can be used to cook the dishes Hispanic residents prefer.
Cruz also sees the high demand for this kind of housing, noting that there’s a waiting list for nearly every affordable seniors housing community in Washington, D.C. The National Hispanic Council on Aging is considering building more locations and expanding into assisted living in the future.
“Seniors want to be in a place where they can comfortably communicate in their language, whether it’s English, Mandarin or Spanish,” says Cruz. “We all want to retain and connect with those cultural elements that identify us as people. That is true not just for Latinos, but any ethnic group.”