Larkmoor garden reopens after the drainage work
Two seasons of mud and one very patient household. The enclosed garden now drains, the loop path returns you to a door you recognize from anywhere on it, and the raised beds are at wheelchair height.
Stillmeade Village is a not for profit community of 280 living units on 96 acres east of Tarrow Bend. You sign one residency agreement, you choose a cottage or an apartment, and the rest of the campus stays behind it: assisted living, memory care and a skilled nursing household, all at the same address, under the same contract, with the same people at the front desk.
A drawn site plan. Stillmeade Village is a fictional community and nothing above is a photograph or a survey of any real place.
Nine families in Tarrow County put up the first money in 1984 because the nearest skilled nursing bed was fifty one miles from the nearest assisted living suite, and they had each driven that road. The first cottages opened in 1986. We are a not for profit with no owner to pay, and we are licensed by the North Carolina Department of Insurance, which is the agency that watches continuing care communities in this state and the reason our books are open to you before you sign anything.
Forty years in, we still have one campus, one waiting list and one telephone number, and a resident still answers the Wednesday coffee.
A continuing care retirement community is really a staircase you only climb if you need to. Most residents arrive into a cottage or an apartment and never think about the rest of it for years. It is there anyway, which is what you are buying.
Freestanding two and three bedroom cottages with a garage, a screened porch and a patch of yard that somebody else mows. The quietest corner of the campus and the hardest to get into.
One and two bedroom apartments on four floors, connected to the dining rooms, the clinic and the chapel by a corridor, which matters more in February than it sounds like in June.
Studio and one bedroom suites with a care team on the floor around the clock. Twenty of the suites sit inside The Terraces so a resident can move to assisted living without changing buildings or table.
A single story household of 26 suites wrapped around one enclosed garden you can see from every common room, with consistent staff assignment so the face at the door on Tuesday is the face from Monday.
Licensed skilled nursing on the campus, in four households of ten rather than one long hall. Residents under contract have priority access to it, and that priority is the plainest thing a continuing care agreement actually does.
After a hip, a knee or a bad week in the hospital, a resident comes back to the campus rather than to a facility in another county. Therapy happens in the gym a resident already knows, and the discharge plan ends at their own front door.
Illustrative mock data. Stillmeade Village is fictional, and every fee, unit count, floor plan and household name on this page was invented for this sample.
Two payments, and they do different jobs. The entrance fee buys your place in the community and your priority access to assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing for as long as you are a resident. The monthly service fee pays for the running of the place: the dining rooms, the grounds, the maintenance, the clinic, the staff. Only one of them is refundable, and you decide how much of it is.
Ninety percent of the entrance fee comes back to you or your estate whenever the agreement ends, with no clock running against it. The highest entrance fee of the three, and the one families choose when they want the money to stay in the family.
Half the entrance fee comes back whenever the agreement ends. A middle entrance fee for people who want something to pass on without paying for the full guarantee.
The lowest entrance fee of the three. The refundable share declines two percent a month from the day you move in, so after fifty months nothing is refundable. People who are spending down on purpose usually pick this one.
| Living unit type | Entrance fee, 90 percent | Entrance fee, 50 percent | Entrance fee, declining | Monthly service fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cottages | $527,000 | $391,000 | $340,000 | $3,150 to $4,250 |
| Apartments | $419,000 | $311,000 | $270,000 | $2,850 to $4,100 |
| Assisted living | $333,000 | $247,000 | $215,000 | $5,200 to $6,600 |
| Memory care | $295,000 | $219,000 | $190,000 | $7,100 to $8,300 |
| Skilled nursing | Direct admission, no entrance fee | $365 a day | ||
A second person in the same unit adds $18,000 to the entrance fee and $1,150 to the monthly service fee. Assisted living and memory care service levels are assessed and priced on top of the monthly service fee, and we tell you the level in writing before you sign. Figures above are a mock schedule for a sample and are not any real community's rates.
The first visit is a tour and lunch. The second one is the useful one: come back on a weekday, sit in the lobby, and talk to whoever walks past without us standing there.
We hand you the statement we file with the North Carolina Department of Insurance, including the audited financials and the occupancy by living unit type we report every quarter. Take it to your own advisor.
A health and financial review, then a refundable deposit of ten percent of the entrance fee holds your place on the priority list for the unit type you want. Passing on an offered unit does not cost you your spot.
When a unit opens you have fourteen days to decide. The entrance fee is due at occupancy, the agreement starts, and our team handles the move itself including the parts nobody warns you about.
Illustrative mock data. The fees, steps and timelines above were written for this sample and are not any real community's terms.
Not the amenity list. These are what people who already live here say when a visitor asks them what it is actually like on an ordinary Thursday.
Thirty raised beds, a potting bench and a key hanging inside the door. The garden committee sells the surplus at the Saturday table and the money goes to the Fellowship Fund, which is how a tomato becomes somebody's monthly fee.
It was a resident vote in 2011 and it has held. Eleven thousand books, four wing chairs, two lamps that work and a sign by the door with nothing on it but the hours. The Thursday poetry group meets at four and reads out loud.
Warm enough for arthritic shoulders, which is the whole argument. Therapy uses the pool until ten, then it belongs to residents, and the nine o'clock class has the same eleven people in it that it had before the renovation.
Illustrative mock data. These vignettes, votes and class sizes were invented for this sample.
Continuing care is the most complicated thing most people buy after a house, and the brochure version of these answers is useless. Here is the long version.
It is one campus that holds independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing, with a contract that connects them. You move in while you are well, you pay an entrance fee and a monthly service fee, and in exchange you get priority access to the higher levels of care on the campus when and if you need them. The point is not the swimming pool. The point is that the hardest move of your life is the one you will not have to make.
Three things. Your living unit for as long as you want it. Priority access to assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing on this campus ahead of anyone from outside it. And a share of the capital that keeps the buildings standing, because a not for profit community has no other way to fund a roof. It does not buy the unit. You are not purchasing real estate and there is nothing to sell when you leave, which is exactly why the refund plan you choose matters.
We will not pretend there is one answer. The 90 percent plan costs the most up front and returns the most, and it is usually the choice of a family who wants the money to go to children. The declining balance plan costs the least up front and returns nothing after fifty months, and it is usually the choice of someone who is deliberately spending down. The 50 percent plan is in the middle. Bring whoever does your taxes. A portion of the entrance fee may be deductible as a medical expense and we are not the right people to tell you how much.
Talk to us the year before it happens rather than the month after. The Fellowship Fund exists for residents who entered able to pay and then outlived their resources through nothing they did wrong. It is funded by donations, by the resident association and by the community's own operating surplus. It is not unlimited and we will say so plainly. No resident has been asked to leave Stillmeade Village for inability to pay since the fund was created in 1993.
Yes, 40 licensed beds at Maybrook in four households of ten. Medicare may cover a qualifying short stay after a hospital admission under the usual federal rules, which have nothing to do with us and change from time to time. A long stay is paid by you, by long term care insurance, or under the terms of your residency agreement, and the specifics depend on which agreement you sign. Our business office will walk a family through the arithmetic line by line before anyone signs, with a calculator on the table.
Continuing care communities in this state are licensed by the North Carolina Department of Insurance, and we file a disclosure statement with it that we update every year. Under the state's continuing care statute, Chapter 58, Article 64 of the General Statutes, we also report quarterly, including occupancy broken out by type of living unit. You are entitled to the current disclosure statement, the audited financial statements and those occupancy figures. Ask once and we will hand them over. Then take them to your own accountant, not ours.
After the health and financial review you place a refundable deposit of ten percent of the entrance fee, and that puts you on the priority list for the unit type you chose, in the order the deposits arrived. When a unit of that type opens we call the top of the list and you have fourteen days. Pass, and you keep your place for the next one. The deposit is fully refundable until you occupy a unit, and the only thing that moves you down the list is you.
Usually, and when we cannot we say so early. Couples often stay in one apartment with assisted living services brought in to one spouse. When one person needs the Larkmoor memory care household, the other stays in their own unit and walks over, which is about four minutes from The Terraces under a roof. Spouses eat in Larkmoor whenever they want and there is no limit on that, including dinner every single night.
Yes in the cottages and the apartments, with a weight limit of 45 pounds and the expectation that you can walk the animal yourself or have arranged for someone who will. Two dogs or two cats maximum. Assisted living is case by case. The Larkmoor household has a resident cat named Prudence who belongs to all 26 suites and sleeps wherever she likes.
It depends entirely on the unit type, which is why we report the list by type. The three bedroom cottages at Hollis Green have waited as long as twenty six months. One bedroom apartments at The Terraces have opened inside of three months. Assisted living and memory care generally do not have a wait of more than a few weeks because those moves are rarely planned a year ahead. We will tell you the real number for the unit you want, not the average.
Illustrative mock data. The answers above were written for this sample and are not any real community's policies or terms.
Created in 1993 when a resident of nine years outlived her savings and the board decided that was not going to be the end of her story. The fund closes the gap between what a resident can pay and what their care costs, and it is the only reason the honest answer to the money question up there is the answer it is.
It also pays for the caregiver group that meets on the second Thursday, which is free, which has no sign up sheet, and which does not ask whether your person lives here.
Illustrative mock data. The fund, its founding and its figures were invented for this sample.
Drawn monograms, not photographs. These four people are invented for this sample and no real person is depicted or named.
Two seasons of mud and one very patient household. The enclosed garden now drains, the loop path returns you to a door you recognize from anywhere on it, and the raised beds are at wheelchair height.
Our occupancy by living unit type went to the Department of Insurance on schedule. The same numbers are posted outside the business office, because residents should not have to request what the state already gets.
The priority list for three bedroom cottages is the longest one we hold. Deposits already on the list get the first six calls in the order they arrived, which is the only order we have ever used.
Illustrative mock data. These posts describe events that did not happen, at a community that does not exist.
Tours run at 10 AM and 2 PM Monday through Friday and take about two hours, which includes a meal in the Terraces dining room and twenty minutes with our residency counselor and nothing to sign. Bring your children, bring your accountant, bring the list of questions you have been afraid to ask. We would rather handle the hard ones on the first visit than the fourth.
Stillmeade Village
2180 Tarrow Bend Road
Tarrow Bend, North Carolina
Main desk (555) 017-4100
Residency (555) 017-4118
Email residency@stillmeade.example
The address, telephone numbers and email address above are invented for this sample and reach nobody.