A growing number of older adults and “baby boomers” are rebelling against the idea of spending their final years alone, wondering who will take care of them, and perhaps ending life in a conventional nursing home. Fortunately a truly new alternative living arrangement is emerging: the elder self-directed intentional community, which puts choice into the hands of the older adults themselves, allowing them to choose proactively how and where they want to live their later years, as well as who they want to grow old with, in a close-knit collaborative community where neighbors look after each other. This is a radical do-it-yourself approach in which older adults themselves envision and implement their own guidelines with no administrator telling them what they can or cannot do.

Older adults consistently indicate a preference to live in their own homes, and the elder self-directed community provides the opportunity to carry out this wish within a community of friends, while adding a supplemental layer of support not commonly found in the average neighborhood. Typically, most caregiving responsibilities have fallen upon family members, but many older adults choose not to depend on their children for their care. An increasing number, especially among baby boomers, have no children. The residents of self-directed elder communities can maintain a sense of independence through a self-designed interdependence and sense of community by intentionally choosing the group of individuals with whom they will age.