Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: When Courtney Tello was a sophomore at Lacelle University in Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: she made a new friend who lived across campus. When
Speaker 2: they talk about how they got to know each other,
Speaker 2: they both laugh.
Speaker 3: We would kind of Joco, have you picked your courses yet?
Speaker 3: What have you picked yours yet? She's like, Oh, I'm
Speaker 3: taking this class and what you just learn about some
Speaker 3: queen for medieval queens.
Speaker 2: The friend Courtney made that second voice you heard is Tony.
Speaker 2: Courtney was an undergraduate student, Tony was not.
Speaker 3: They started in college seventy two years ago.
Speaker 2: Tony was assigned as Courtney's mentor through a cross generational
Speaker 2: program on campus.
Speaker 3: I would probably talk for an hour, Yeah, like ye,
Speaker 3: it had gone by that scheduled well the next week.
Speaker 2: In ministry, Courtney was studying elementary education and Tony, when
Speaker 2: she was still in the workforce, was an elementary school teacher.
Speaker 1: The two hit it off right away.
Speaker 3: I can share some things with her, just being a
Speaker 3: sounding board, and I mean, what better person to turn
Speaker 3: to than somebody who's you know, even breathing, you know,
Speaker 3: And yeah, I've been so blessed, like everybody's jealous of
Speaker 3: me up there. I'm going for dinner tonight at the village.
Speaker 2: That village Courtney's talking about is Lacelle Village. It's the
Speaker 2: senior living community where Tony lives, and it's actually right
Speaker 2: on Lacelle University's campus.
Speaker 4: Lacelle Village and Lasselle University used to host like a
Speaker 4: senior prom like a senior, senior like senior and senior
Speaker 4: like college students, and senior as in like seniors from
Speaker 4: the community.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Rembert covers higher education on Bloomberg's Municipal Finance team,
Speaker 2: and she says, at a time of Windling's student enrollment,
Speaker 2: tight school finances, and a rapidly aging population, universities have
Speaker 2: been opening their campuses to an unusual source of revenue,
Speaker 2: retirement communities.
Speaker 4: Then, as I dug into the topic more, these instances
Speaker 4: of senior living facilities being on active college campuses kept
Speaker 4: popping up, and I noticed, Oh, this seems like it's
Speaker 4: more of a trend.
Speaker 2: A trend that's led to some money in campus coffers
Speaker 2: and to friendships like Courtney and Tony's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've done breakfast, lunch, dinner, caring about her projects,
Speaker 3: My feeling is that she's going to be really awesome.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, we explore the trend
Speaker 2: of colleges opening up senior living residences next to or
Speaker 2: even right on campus. What's in it for the schools,
Speaker 2: what's in it for the senior citizens, and what happens
Speaker 2: when baby boomers and Gen Z students coexist. Bloomberg's Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Rembert met Courtney and Tony a few months ago on
Speaker 2: a visit to Lacell University in Massachusetts.
Speaker 4: Courtney, when you decided to go to school here, were
Speaker 4: you surprised that.
Speaker 3: There was this element on campus? And you know, I
Speaker 3: had kind of heard of it, but I didn't really
Speaker 3: know what it truly was, because I was like, I
Speaker 3: was just a bunch of houses down at the bottom
Speaker 3: street the Bottoma Hill. Yeah, just as much as I do.
Speaker 2: Those houses sit on La Cell's fifty four acre campus
Speaker 2: near Boston, so really prime real estate, and that's part
Speaker 2: of what makes Lacelle an appealing place for retirees like
Speaker 2: Tony to move in.
Speaker 4: So this set up started with the vision of the
Speaker 4: president of the school. At that point, President Tom DeWitt,
Speaker 4: and he saw this unused parcel of land on the
Speaker 4: l Sell University's campus. He wanted to use it to
Speaker 4: bring more money onto the school's back sheets. At that point,
Speaker 4: they were a community college. They were kind of struggling,
Speaker 4: and President DeWitt saw it as an opportunity to bring
Speaker 4: on some more income, but also as a way to
Speaker 4: kind of further its education mission and bring on these
Speaker 4: seniors who really had this interest in lifelong learning, wanted
Speaker 4: to be a part of this vibrant campus life and
Speaker 4: kind of live out their golden years on a college campus.
Speaker 2: So they can live in this community and take classes
Speaker 2: at the college.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, I've signed up to.
Speaker 5: Take a juggling course and the other one is a.
Speaker 3: History of hip hop.
Speaker 2: Lacelle Village opened back in two thousand. In addition to
Speaker 2: juggling and hip hop history courses, the university offers mentorship programs,
Speaker 2: pairing villagers like Tony with students like Courtney. When Elizabeth
Speaker 2: met her in the spring, Courtney was a college senior.
Speaker 4: Just as soon as you see Tony and Courtney, you
Speaker 4: can tell that they have a very close relationship.
Speaker 3: She's like a grandchild, my second grandmother, and I feel
Speaker 3: like it's been in my life this whole time.
Speaker 1: That's so heartwarming.
Speaker 2: How common is this retirees or seniors living in communities
Speaker 2: on college campuses.
Speaker 4: I talk to an expert who kind of tracks these communities.
Speaker 4: He calls them university retirement communities, and he estimates that
Speaker 4: there's about eighty five across the country. The different ways
Speaker 4: that they play out in these places can vary, and
Speaker 4: so there's places like Lacelle Village at Lasell University, which
Speaker 4: is very educational. It's on campus, the residents have to
Speaker 4: sign up for four hundred and fifty hours of annual learning.
Speaker 4: And then there's other places the University of Alabama. I
Speaker 4: think they have one on campus, but there's not the
Speaker 4: same like educational requirements. And then there's other places like
Speaker 4: in Florida at the universities there where there will be
Speaker 4: a retirement community just off of campus. Well, Elizabeth, I'm
Speaker 4: wondering if you could give us a little back story here.
Speaker 4: When did this movement of seniors and college students cohabitating
Speaker 4: start in the US. It started in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 4: according to the experts that I talked to, and it
Speaker 4: really started at Iowa State University and Indiana University, where
Speaker 4: basically retired alumni, faculty, college presidents, we're saying, we loved
Speaker 4: this place, We gave our careers to this place. What
Speaker 4: am I going to do now that I'm retiring. I
Speaker 4: still want to be attached to this community. And so
Speaker 4: they started nearby senior living facilities that grew into more
Speaker 4: establish places when the schools would partner with senior living operators,
Speaker 4: and so it kind of just started as this informal
Speaker 4: place where people can stay close to these places they
Speaker 4: care about so much. But now I think it's kind
Speaker 4: of gaining steam more of a business model as schools
Speaker 4: contend with a really challenging landscape in higher education right now.
Speaker 2: One of the biggestallenges for colleges right now is a
Speaker 2: drop in enrollment numbers. Researchers are predicting that high school
Speaker 2: graduating class sizes peaked in twenty twenty five, that from
Speaker 2: now on, graduating class sizes are just going to fall.
Speaker 2: That's in part because birth rates dropped around the two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight financial crisis. In eighteen years later, that
Speaker 2: drop is hitting college enrollment. Fewer students means less tuition
Speaker 2: and less revenue for these schools in the next decade.
Speaker 2: That could force as many as three hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: private colleges in the US to close or to merge.
Speaker 2: According to a major higher education consulting firm called Huron
Speaker 2: Consulting Group, that would impact some six hundred thousand students.
Speaker 4: And so the drop that we've already seen. At least
Speaker 4: forty colleges have closed or announced plans to close since
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, so we've already seen the effects playing out
Speaker 4: among small colleges, and some research suggests that under a
Speaker 4: worst case drop in enrollment, assuming a fifteen percent drop
Speaker 4: in perspective students, we could see as many as eighty
Speaker 4: additional colleges closing. People are saying that schools really need
Speaker 4: to be thinking about bold ideas to remain afloat in
Speaker 4: these challenging times. And we know that as the high
Speaker 4: school graduates go down, you know, America is getting older,
Speaker 4: the amount of retirees is going up.
Speaker 2: And that wave of aging Americans, the so called silver tsunami,
Speaker 2: needs retirement friendly housing. The National Investment Center for Seniors
Speaker 2: Housing and Care, a nonprofit, estimates that the US will
Speaker 2: need over eight hundred and six thousand new retirement units
Speaker 2: by twenty thirty. Elizabeth says her sources have told her
Speaker 2: that more and more universities are seeing that as an
Speaker 2: opportunity and asking questions about how they can get their
Speaker 2: own senior living community started.
Speaker 4: So this is kind of a natural demographic play if
Speaker 4: you're trying to think about where can we find new customers.
Speaker 2: Here's how these deals tend to work. A college will
Speaker 2: generally lease its land or share its branding or services
Speaker 2: with a retirement community and independently run private residence that
Speaker 2: opens up on or near its campus. In many cases,
Speaker 2: like LaSells, the university offers retirees access to the schools
Speaker 2: courses and amenities. In rare cases, the schools have full
Speaker 2: or partial ownership of the retirement communities. In exchange for
Speaker 2: sharing their land, branding, or services, the schools collect payments.
Speaker 5: High Ed really needs to start thinking outside the box.
Speaker 2: That's my Kopis the vice president for administration at Purchase College,
Speaker 2: a state university in Westchester County, New York. In twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, a senior living community called Broadview opened up
Speaker 2: on campus.
Speaker 5: There's pretty much a land lease agreement, so they run
Speaker 5: forty acres least forty acres from the college or from
Speaker 5: the State of New York. The State of New York,
Speaker 5: through a legislative process, agreed to the terms as long
Speaker 5: as that money came back in the form of scholarship
Speaker 5: money and faculty support.
Speaker 4: Part of how it supports education at purchase is that
Speaker 4: the senior living facility pays two million dollars a year
Speaker 4: to the college, and seventy five percent of that is
Speaker 4: for student scholarships, and then twenty five percent of that
Speaker 4: is towards supporting faculty.
Speaker 5: So it gives us additional scholarship money. In the times
Speaker 5: where it state support's been fantastic, but you know there's
Speaker 5: a little uncertainty with the administrations, could be a change
Speaker 5: of administration. This is real dollars coming to the campus
Speaker 5: that you can count on on a yearly basis.
Speaker 2: Broadview has two hundred and twenty independent living apartments and villas,
Speaker 2: plus additional assisted living and memory care facilities. According to
Speaker 2: Broadview's website, residents pay a one time entrance fee plus
Speaker 2: a monthly fee. The entrance fee can range from two
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy thousand dollars to about two point five
Speaker 2: million dollars depending on the unit, and it's partially repaid
Speaker 2: to residents or their estates after they move out or
Speaker 2: pass away. Elizabeth says, for retirees who opt into these programs,
Speaker 2: the cell is about more than just a roof over
Speaker 2: their heads.
Speaker 4: The people that I talk to say that today's retirees
Speaker 4: they don't want just a pretty place to live. They
Speaker 4: want to continue their hobbies, they want to be lifelong learners.
Speaker 4: They're really in search of these vibrant places and activities,
Speaker 4: and colleges can provide those natural programs for them that
Speaker 4: really fill their days. And the residents that I talked
Speaker 4: to said that they did like the you know, around
Speaker 4: young people, keeping them vibrant. And then the students really
Speaker 4: do cherish those relationships like Courtney and Tony, those friendship relationships,
Speaker 4: but also the mentoring that can come and the networking
Speaker 4: that can come.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth says things have been going well since seniors first
Speaker 2: moved on to Purchase College's campus two years ago.
Speaker 4: Their residents seem really excited by the programs that they
Speaker 4: get to do as a part of members of the
Speaker 4: college campus community. Purchase has a really big performing arts scene.
Speaker 4: I talk to a Day's professor, and she said that
Speaker 4: that's been really helpful for her students because it's been
Speaker 4: kind of a built in audience for these performers. They
Speaker 4: can get used to dancing in front of an audience.
Speaker 2: Bigger audiences for student performances, strong intergenerational friendships. This all
Speaker 2: sounds really great, but at some schools the setup has
Speaker 2: come with growing pains.
Speaker 1: So denied a big rulelane in a battle over noise
Speaker 1: that's after the break.
Speaker 2: In early twenty twenty one, a group of senior citizens
Speaker 2: moved into Mirabella, a residential community on Arizona State University's
Speaker 2: main campus near Phoenix.
Speaker 1: Mirabella boasts aqua.
Speaker 2: Fitness exercise classes, access to the university's five million book library,
Speaker 2: and the opportunity to audit university courses on everything from
Speaker 2: woodworking to salsa dancing.
Speaker 1: It all sounded great, but.
Speaker 4: There was some ten between their senior living community on campus.
Speaker 4: It was right next to a music venue that was
Speaker 4: really loud.
Speaker 2: Mirabella and its residents sued the music venue for incessant
Speaker 2: and unrelenting noise. ABC fifteen, a local station, interviewed Mirabella residents,
Speaker 2: capturing their frustration at the time they played.
Speaker 1: Music so loud where we live right here, and it kept.
Speaker 2: Us away, But some students argued that the campus was
Speaker 2: meant to serve them, not the senior citizens who'd moved
Speaker 2: in next door. One student wrote an op ed in
Speaker 2: the college newspaper criticizing the school for investing in the
Speaker 2: wrong things, prioritizing Mirabella and the financial profits it brought
Speaker 2: over the needs of its students, and one local resident
Speaker 2: voiced similar concerns in another interview with ABC fifteen, why
Speaker 2: are we building a fifty five plus community on ASU campus?
Speaker 5: Like this place should be able to have concerts because
Speaker 5: it's on ASU campus.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Mirabella and the Venue settled the lawsuit and the
Speaker 2: venue promised to implement new sound mitigation measures, and other
Speaker 2: ASU students have praised Mirabella for the new programs and
Speaker 2: unexpected friendships that's brought to campus. Elizabeth says snags like
Speaker 2: that lawsuit aside, these programs can also be challenging to
Speaker 2: get off the ground to begin with, even when both
Speaker 2: parties are bought in, it.
Speaker 1: Is an unlikely pair.
Speaker 4: In some ways, schools tend to be these very bureaucratic,
Speaker 4: slow moving institutions, where senior housing companies are often pretty
Speaker 4: shareholder driven, so they want results fast and thinking about
Speaker 4: the timeline specifically of like Broadview and Purchase College. Purchase
Speaker 4: College started floating the idea in the early two thousands
Speaker 4: and doors opened in December twenty twenty three. So the
Speaker 4: experts that I spoke to said that patience is a
Speaker 4: big part of it, and.
Speaker 2: These arrangements aren't a good fit for every small college
Speaker 2: that's struggling to stay float. For one thing, the school
Speaker 2: needs to have enough land to lease out a chunk
Speaker 2: of it, and it helps if it's near a big
Speaker 2: population center like Boston, New York City, or Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, it's not a silver bullet for the really challenging
Speaker 4: landscape of higher education right now.
Speaker 2: Are these programs enough to tip away at some of
Speaker 2: the financial and enrollment issues that universities across the country
Speaker 2: are facing and to address the shortage of retirement units?
Speaker 2: How would you assess this as an approach for solving
Speaker 2: both of these.
Speaker 4: Problems on the college side. When I talk to the
Speaker 4: president of Lacelle and Folks on the Purchase College side
Speaker 4: of things, they said that the revenue that's coming in
Speaker 4: from the management contractor from the land lease from these
Speaker 4: senior living communities. It's not a huge part of their
Speaker 4: balance sheet, but it does free up other money for them,
Speaker 4: so it can be a tool. It's not going to
Speaker 4: save the day, I think for these really large, just
Speaker 4: nationwide challenges. And then as far as the retirement housing side,
Speaker 4: it can be a partnership. This is a niche. It's
Speaker 4: a niche of people who would want to live on
Speaker 4: a college campus. It's a niche of It does tend
Speaker 4: to be a more expensive option as far as senior
Speaker 4: living housing, but there's got to be lots of options
Speaker 4: to solve the housing crisis and the gap in how
Speaker 4: much senior living communities we need versus we have right now.
Speaker 2: Tony Miller told Elizabeth that she's found a home on
Speaker 2: campus at Lacel Village.
Speaker 4: Retirement community is a place to go and die.
Speaker 5: And here it's definitely people come and they're going to.
Speaker 3: Live it up to the end. Yeah, and that makes
Speaker 3: a big difference.
Speaker 2: Courtney Tello graduated from Lasell University in the spring, but
Speaker 2: she's still on campus getting her master's degree and assistant
Speaker 2: coaching the field hockey team, and she and Tony have
Speaker 2: stayed close.
Speaker 3: I told Tony that I'm gonna crash arm how it's
Speaker 3: actually moving in a degree, doesn't I'm going anywhere?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you two will continue to stage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: When I was talking to the students and the residents,
Speaker 4: it would come back to realizing, you know, we're not
Speaker 4: so different when you're in the same space, when you're
Speaker 4: both trying to learn Spanish or you're just trying to
Speaker 4: make a friend on a college campus. When those types
Speaker 4: of bonds can become stronger than just the assumptions that
Speaker 4: you might have looking at someone, it melts away and
Speaker 4: then you realize this is a friend, or this is
Speaker 4: a fellow student who we're both trying to learn Spanish.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
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