'Villages' help D.C. seniors stay in homes

WASHINGTON -- Weaver Shepperson has been blind for nearly 50 years. He's lived alone since his wife died in 1999 and needs transportation several times a month to visit his doctors.

Yet he doesn't plan to move out of the row house in Washington's historic Capitol Hill neighborhood where he's lived since 1955.

The 80-year-old is part of a burgeoning movement among senior citizens determined to stay in their homes as long as possible. With the help of nonprofit groups known as "villages," they're enjoying many of the perks that residents of retirement or assisted-living communities receive, at a fraction of the cost.

Shepperson pays $530 annually for membership in Capitol Hill Village. It enables him to receive a ride to the doctor's office from the village's network of volunteers. The village also takes care of his grocery shopping. Without it, he says he might have had to move into assisted living. "After the village became available, I stopped thinking about what my other alternatives would be," he said.

Capitol Hill Village is one of the oldest and most robust of the roughly 65 active villages nationwide. It's been around four years and has more than 350 members.

While the village movement is gaining momentum, it's an option unavailable to the vast majority of elderly Americans. There also are questions about the long-term viability of the organizations.

The desire of Americans to live at home instead of moving into retirement or assisted-living communities -- known as "aging in place" -- has always been strong. AARP surveys consistently show that nearly 90 percent of people 65 and older want to stay in their homes as long as possible.

About half of the nation's villages are concentrated in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Between 10,000 and 13,000 people are members, according to the Village-to-Village Network, which tracks and coordinates villages around the country.

Those statistics, though, underscore the limitations of the village concept: Most are located in densely populated, relatively affluent urban or suburban communities. Their members are also mostly white -- more than 90 percent, according to a survey last year by the University of California, Berkeley.