This Start-Up Is Looking at the Future of Senior Living, Aging in Place

The most common options for single, healthy seniors are to either live alone, move into an institutional senior living facility, or move in with family.

Each option can present issues. Living alone can lead to loneliness-related health issues; institutional living is too expensive for most families; and moving in with family can put an additional burden on children now raising their own families.

UpsideHoM is building a new model to tackle some of these issues, and they’re calling it a “deconstructed” senior living facility.

Baby boomers and senior living

Driven largely by the coronavirus pandemic, senior living occupancy rates are shrinking, while inventory growth has also slowed. Less people are living in senior housing, and the capacity of senior living is topping out — all while boomers continue to age.

According to a report from the University of Chicago, by 2029 less than half of middle-income seniors in the U.S. will be able to afford senior or assisted living. Meanwhile, the youngest boomers will reach the senior age of 65 by 2029. Something has to give.

What is ‘deconstructed’ senior living?

UpsideHoM is currently operational in Florida, offering one- to three-bedroom apartments for people they call “tweeniors,” or those between adult and senior in the 60 to 85 age range. They’re offering a living solution for these tweeniors so they can live independently in an intergenerational community.

Apartments on the UpsideHoM platform are geographically clustered around community centers and hubs and include member resources. For example, there may be 100 different UpsideHoM apartment units within Jacksonville, Florida, but spread across a dozen different apartment communities. UpsideHoM gets its inventory from existing multifamily communities in the area, which allows for fast expansion with low overhead.

UpsideHoM even offers a roommate matching feature for tweeniors who don’t want to live alone but don’t already have someone to live with in mind. Residents pay per bedroom, per month, and the contracts are flexible.

Also included with UpsideHoM membership is one-bill simplicity for water, electric, cable, and internet; regular housekeeping; a dedicated concierge team; optional companion visits; fresh, chef-prepared meals; grocery delivery; laundry and dry cleaning; transportation; virtual and in-person learning; fitness programming; and more.

UpsideHoM’s model

UpsideHoM works with corporate-run apartment communities at the local and regional level to build their inventory. The company is accumulating units on the first floor when communities have stairs. UpsideHoM furnishes common areas and then lists units on a per-unit basis on its platform.

UpsideHoM’s team is then the single point of contact for the resident, including maintenance requests, which UpsideHoM relays to the community’s property manager. UpsideHoM collects all rents to keep it simple and streamlined for its tweeniors.

Says Jake Rothstein, UpsideHoM’s founder and CEO, in a press release: