Spring Home Health Center
sponsored by breastcancer resources
People being born and people giving birth, people dying and people giving death care - all need safe, healthful, and sacred space in which to make these passages. This attention to the beginnings and endings of life are central to the philosophy of Spring Home Health. With years of experience now in rural living and primary health care, we at Spring are embarking on the creation of a project that will include a complete senior community living center, ranging from assisted living and adult daycare to a hospice for the dying. It will feature a mix of luxury and low cost housing for all types of aging residents.
The idea is that people with special needs for a community of this kind will cooperate to produce a pleasing and healing community. We believe that we have the experience necessary to design an inexpensive and graceful paradigm that can serve as a model for health care for the the century we have just embarked upon. Next door to our 2.25 acres of land is 2 acres of land which Spring Living can purchase for the density increase required for the establishment of the Spring Home Health Center. It is our intention to raise funds to build energy-efficient housing for people and finish the project we are so close to completing.
The revenue model is simple. According to Rick Morales (210-923-4605) who is doing this in San Antonio, the rental per room in an assisted living facility is $2500 per month. In our about to be completed facility on our land, we have a 5,000 square foot building with 11 bedrooms, 4 kitchens, 6 bathrooms, 3 major living room areas, and decks that wrap around the entire structure. This would produce and income of $25,000 gross per month with anticipated costs of about $9,000 to $11,000 per month including round the clock nursing staff available.
The Texas Department of Health and Human Services maintains a list of elderly people who are looking for assisted living facilities. A lot of these people don't want to move in to a big, impersonal complex. They'd rather be at a bed and breakfast type facility where they will find warm hospitality and loving care that Spring Living envisions providing.
It would require an investment of $15,000 to purchase 2 additional acres of land required to raise our density limit from 7 to 13 people and would require another $15,000 to bring the building and road to the building up to the standard that a facility of this would require. Once the revenue stream was established, that revenue could be used to repay an investor and to make additional upgrades and changes as required. And we would be able to purchase additional adjacent land for future development of a cultural center and community center for this project and for other uses that we have in mind.
Spring's role is to maintain the land and to provide organizational administration for the project. The basic idea is that elderly and fragile people can band together to create for themselves a friendly, safe and affordable environment. Many older people would like to band together but are not strong enough to buy land and manage the infrastructure. Part of this infrastructure is the staffing of an office to facilitate communications between Spring residents and their legal and medical support structure, whether public or private, assist residents and outpatients in obtaining their entitlements. Many older people are underserved simply because they have trouble filling out insurance forms or have no transportation to clinics or doctors' offices.
Eventually, we envision a modular use of the land, where small cabins of single or multiple occupancy for elderly or fragile people are connected by paved roadways suitable for power wheelchairs and solar-electric utility carts. The center would be a plaza with a covered walkway around the edge that would be a meeting place and sheltered exercise path. The paths would connect residents up with our present swimming pool, which we would upgrade to a heated pool. In the long run, the project is going to cost hundreds of thousands, possibly, millions of dollars. As it gets rolling, it will begin to earn that for itself, but in these early times while we harness the synergy, we need Grants in Aid and Investment Loans for seed money.
Right now we have a small crew of residents who are either already living on the new 2 acres or building facilities to move into. These are dedicated people who want to carry this project to fruition. Some of our first residents will be elderly people who are tough enough to settle into small cabins designed for the assisted living mode.
This is more than a housing project. We are not primarily 'providing' housing. We are providing a whole framework for living, including access to care, friends and peer group, access to cabinetry shop or gardens and all of the healthful aspects of community. We are helping people help themselves. With our help, these people can be a largely self-sufficient community and no longer be part of a large, underserved population.
The more I talk to people about Spring Living, the more I see how many people are not well fixed to retire. Many people are afraid. By this, I mean the marginal people, the people who were the most injured by the economics of the last twelve years: the old, the young, the fragile. Spring Living intends to show how even these marginal people, working in concert, can create at least a measure of societal safety in this era of burst safety nets.
The prevailing mood of the money people in the United States is that there will not be universal health coverage in the US if they can prevent it. I read in the newspapers that by the year 2009, 35 percent of the elderly in the US will have no health insurance. That is 5 years from now. The article went on to say that some form of collectivity seemed necessary. Spring Living is timely.
We are hearing from people who want to build centers similar to Spring where they live. All are aware of the need and champing at the bit to pioneer elderly cooperatives. We anticipate that this may eventually lead to a network of small, self-directed care centers, and it is possible that Spring will serve as an organizational hub for this movement.
Although, from my experience in the field, I know that no one will fund or give grants for anything religious, we sneak it in by being obviously spiritual in our actions - taking care of one another in a kind, loving and spiritual fashion. I would hope that we could be a center of culture, but I am against any attempt to have a 'Spiritual Brand Name' associated with the project. I want to be as attractive to an ethical atheist as to an overtly spiritual person. No one should feel that they need to 'convert' to anything.
We would be ecological by the simple fact of living lightly upon the earth and caring for ourselves in an inexpensive and graceful way that could be reproduced and therefore be of significant value to the planet. The way I see us seeding Spring Living is by making a paradigm that can travel and work in other localities. We, of course, would give help and advice to other seedling projects. I don't think people need teachings so much as viable examples. Considering the damage that Mrs. Thatcher did to the health system in the United Kingdom, it looks like this paradigm is just as relevant on your side of the Atlantic as on ours.
Even if you are not elderly and don't expect to utilize Spring Living, the revolutionary aspect of our movement should amuse you. It does us.
The address of Spring is 182 Clover Rd, Cedar Creek, TX 78612.
Paul or Dorothy, I'd like to make a donation.