CCRCs Are Expanding Retirement Home Care to Seniors’ Own Homes

Not a single step interrupts the path, lined with thyme, to the front door of Joan Brasier’s ranch house in Asheville, N.C. With its remodeled primary bath and easy-to-clean surfaces, Ms. Brasier intends to stay in her home with her husband, Paul Wilczynski, for the foreseeable future.

It’s the unforeseeable, though, that has worried them. She and Mr. Wilczynski, both retired, want to travel. But they were concerned about spending money for fun today that they may need for care tomorrow, even though their careful calculations showed they could most likely afford it.

The couple found a solution in a little-known retirement model of care that is gaining momentum. “Continuing care at home,” provided through a continuing care retirement community, blends the expertise of those communities with support for members staying in their own homes. Members of these programs can move into the facility they contract with, if they need to, with the assurance of containing future costs.

About 75 percent of American adults in a 2024 AARP survey said they hoped to stay in their longtime homes, or “age in place,” as long as possible, with only 29 percent of older adults in the survey saying the traditional continuing care model was a likely choice. That model not only involves moving but requires a hefty entry fee and monthly fees to live on-site, where residents can transition to higher levels of care as their needs dictate. The at-home model has been operated by a few communities for decades, creating enough of a track record for the long-term-care industry to adopt it more widely.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/business/retirement-long-term-care.html