Housing at hospitals as a benefit for longevity for the wealthy, and housing aimed at achieving health equity goals

Hospital adjacent housing for the well off.  A new hospital development in West Palm Beach, Florida will include mixed use retail and housing ("New Good Samaritan Hospital, with luxury housing and retail planned in West Palm Beach," South Florida Sun-Sentinel).  

The new hospital, which Tenet is calling a next-generation Center of Excellence for health care, will be part of a larger, mixed-use project by Easton Street Capital that will include luxury condominiums, rentals, retail and a hotel.

“We will be reimaging the Good Samaritan campus,” said Maggie Gill, group president of Tenet Healthcare. “In partnership with Easton Street Capital, we are redeveloping the site for housing, wellness and health care. This is a well-funded plan to make state-of-the-art health care facilities and technology more accessible to the region.”

...“The focus of the entire campus is a place where you can live, work and receive health care with an emphasis on wellness and longevity,” Gill said. “We think of it as an integrative approach to looking at the person holistically to help them stay healthy.”

... Housing will include rentals for the hospital workforce, as well as luxury condominiums to attract baby boomers seeking easy access to health care, an alternative to senior living. “I want to build longevity living where we’re trying to enhance the health span and the lifespan of the baby boomers,” Crowell said. “We think there will be buyers from around the country who come into this project.”

Also see "Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach plans massive redo," Palm Beach Post. 

I have been somewhat "down" on mixed use proposals like what the Coalition for Smart Growth wanted for the new Prince George's County hospital with the University of Maryland ("University of Maryland could seed a complementary biotechnology and medical education initiative in Prince George's County") because my experience doing some consulting in Pittsburgh was that hospitals pretty much are inward facing places--people don't have much time to eat off campus, shop, etc.  

According to my next door neighbor, a doctor, now, some hospitals even offer private dining facilities with meals prepared by a chef, for physicians.  Try to get them to go to a nearby diner...

However, I have written about the St. Anthony Hospital project in Chicago, which will have housing ("New St. Anthony Hospital to be part of $600 million development at former trade school site in Little Village," Chicago Sun-Times).

Finished affordable housing units for sale in Baltimore with a great interest rate and relatively low cost.

And how Bon Secours Hospital System in Baltimore has developed senior and affordable housing as a part of providing better living facilities for older patients ("Royal Farms, Y of Central Maryland join Saint Agnes' Gibbons Commons project," Baltimore Business Journal. Bon Secours Community Development).  

They have 800 units, plus 147 units in development.  That's a decent amount.

Separately, they are rehabilitating 20 vacant houses and will make them available for sale ("8 things to know: Health system revives 20 vacant West Baltimore homes," Baltimore Business Journal).  

Not a huge project, but given Baltimore's straits, a worthy one, and a risk where others seem to sit back.

Dunn House, Toronto.

And while slightly more oriented to the homeless, there are a couple initiatives in Toronto sparked by hospitals, where they provide housing to chronically homeless or health needy people, in large part because it's cheaper to treat them when they have housing, than when they don't ("This Toronto philanthropist has millions to spend. Here’s why she’s pouring it into the homelessness crisis," "These Toronto hospitals are quietly sheltering homeless patients themselves to avoid discharging them into the cold," "Jason Miles’ addiction cost $260,000 in emergency room, shelter and jail stays. A Toronto hospital’s radical solution: just give him a home," Toronto Star, "Toronto’s University Health Network Takes on the Housing Crisis," Azure).

More on longevity housing projects in Florida ("New condo concept blends real estate and wellness. The goal? Staying young," Sun-Sentinel). 

Florida already has become home to hundreds of medical providers and clinics that promote treatments to slow aging and combat aging-related conditions.

“There is so much interest in it right now,” said Zhe He, director of Florida State University’s Institute for Successful Longevity. Aging, he said, is becoming viewed as a potentially modifiable condition that could be improved with certain interventions. He said that loneliness or social isolation can contribute to aging, so this type of longevity-promoting community environment could in itself have health benefits.

Cromwell said about 300 units in Easton Street Capital’s luxury condominium building will be marketed for $5 million to $25 million each. “The pricing is going to be expensive, but we are also fortunate that the baby boomers have accumulated more wealth than any other generation, and now, as they’re 80, there are two things in their lives that are the most important,” Cromwell said. “One is family and two is living longer because they want to be with their family.”

To help fund the preventive care services, Cromwell said Easton Street Capital plans to sell longevity center memberships. “This allows the general public to come in to access some of these services to cover and drive down the costs to the residents.”

There is two projects, by THE WELL group.

In North Miami-Dade, a condominium with a similar concept is expected to open by the end of the month. THE WELL in Bay Harbor Islands has combined a wellness center with 66 condominium units and some workspace.

Kane Sarhan, co-founder and chief creative officer of THE WELL brand, said the wellness center in the condominium building has a full gym, a bathhouse with a steam room, an infrared sauna, and a cold plunge. There are treatment rooms for IV vitamin therapy and access to functional medicine doctors, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, skin care, acupuncture, physical therapy, and energy work. There is also an organic cafe and grocery store that offers meal programs, and a movement studio for yoga, meditation, and fitness classes.

... Further south in Coconut Grove, THE WELL is underway with a second location: a larger condominium building with 194 residences. The units are larger and more expensive, from $1.5 to more than $10 million, but the concept remains the same — residences combined with 13,000 square feet of fitness and wellness spaces. Like its other locations, the wellness center will include visits with functional medicine doctors, health coaches, nutritionists and massage therapists.

RN Melissa Shaw checked on an IV drip bag for client John Blazo.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff

It will be interesting to see if the "new age-y medicine stuff" which isn't research backed in terms of health benefits will feed into the hospital centric projects ("People are spending hundreds of dollars at IV drip bars in Boston. Are they worth the hype?," Boston Globe).

I had a colonoscopy last week and in talking with the doctor before the procedure, I was talking about people and their belief in things like "detoxing" your liver (I have some liver damage because of the various medicines I take).  We joked about it, and he said he's thought about creating a clinic that caters to that thinking--he'd make a lot of money from it, but he said he couldn't do it ethically.

Health equity and health-housing for the less well off.  The former examples are more about the well off wanting to live longer.  

But why not have housing on hospital campuses for the less well off, as a way to better achieve high ratings when it comes to "social determinants of health"? ("Health equity devolves to cities and states as the federal government cuts taxes for the wealthy").  

Bon Secours, hopefully Focal Point, and various workforce housing initiatives show a way forward, so that such services and benefits may not be limited only to the wealthy.