Oregon’s largest city, Portland offers the best senior living benefits in the U.S, according to a recent survey produced by a partnership between Bankers Life and Casualty Company and Sperling’s BestPlaces. It is likely that the Eugene/Springfield was too small for the competition, but those of us living here think it is a pretty darn nice place to live.
Seattle, San Francisco, Pittsburg and Milwaukee rounded out the top 5.
What Makes a City Good for Senior Living?
Health: includes criteria such as physician-to-senior ratio, gerontologist-to-senior ratio, hospitals per capita, and the availability of adult day care, assisted living facilities, continuing care (CCRC) facilities, independent living facilities, nursing homes, and senior meals. With the additional of the new Sacred Heart Medical Center, I think Eugene/Springfield would rate well in this area.
Disease: covers life expectancy, age 85 expectancy, and rates of depression, heart disease, and cancer. Sometimes when it rains for several days in a row here, it just seems our life is longer. LOL
Economics: includes consumer prices, sales taxes, unemployment rate, and recent job growth. Larger cities like Portland definitely have the economics of scale that are missing in a smaller, albeit, more comfortable community like Eugene/Springfield.
Social: identifies the percentage of seniors in the community and availability of entertainment opportunities, the arts, museums, education, recreation, colleges, and libraries. This is one area I think we excel with the number of college campuses here, including the University of Oregon and artistic expansion like the Hult Center for the performing arts.
Environmental: assesses the number of sunny days, measurements of clean air and water, risk of natural disasters, and the presence of ocean coastline, rivers and lakes, and national parks. In this area, I think we beat Portland. We have all that they do and less traffic.
Spiritual: looks at the percentage of the population belonging to organized religions, and the number of religious congregations in the community. Got you covered here too.
Transportation: rates the availability of public transportation and special access transportation, along with commuting times. Our LTD system is constantly getting better, now with the EMX shortly expanding to the Gateway Mall and Sacred Heart area.
Housing: includes cost of living, median home price, property taxes and monthly apartment rent. Housing prices in Lane County have been dropping and talking to several rental management companies, so are rents.
Crime: ranks incidents of violent crime and property crime. Like anywhere, parts of Lane County are worse than others, but Springfield recently built a new jail that is helping the crime rate and we have some outstanding police officers all through the county.
In a news release about the survey, Bankers’ Chief Operating Officer Scott Perry said the senior living survey results included some cities that are not often associated with senior living.
That’s because we weren’t looking for the best places to be retired, but the best cities for seniors regardless of whether they are retired, working, active or not, healthy or not,” he said. “It’s about more than golf courses and tennis courts.
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