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When Courtney Tello was a sophomore at Lacelle University in Massachusetts, she made a new friend who lived across campus. When they talk about how they got to know each other, they both laugh.
We would kind of Joco, have you picked your courses yet? What have you picked yours yet? She's like, Oh, I'm taking this class and what you just learn about some queen for medieval queens.
The friend Courtney made that second voice you heard is Tony. Courtney was an undergraduate student, Tony was not.
They started in college seventy two years ago.
Tony was assigned as Courtney's mentor through a cross generational program on campus.
I would probably talk for an hour, Yeah, like ye, it had gone by that scheduled well the next week.
In ministry, Courtney was studying elementary education and Tony, when she was still in the workforce, was an elementary school teacher.
The two hit it off right away.
I can share some things with her, just being a sounding board, and I mean, what better person to turn to than somebody who's you know, even breathing, you know, And yeah, I've been so blessed, like everybody's jealous of me up there. I'm going for dinner tonight at the village.
That village Courtney's talking about is Lacelle Village. It's the senior living community where Tony lives, and it's actually right on Lacelle University's campus.
Lacelle Village and Lasselle University used to host like a senior prom like a senior, senior like senior and senior like college students, and senior as in like seniors from the community.
Elizabeth Rembert covers higher education on Bloomberg's Municipal Finance team, and she says, at a time of Windling's student enrollment, tight school finances, and a rapidly aging population, universities have been opening their campuses to an unusual source of revenue, retirement communities.
Then, as I dug into the topic more, these instances of senior living facilities being on active college campuses kept popping up, and I noticed, Oh, this seems like it's more of a trend.
A trend that's led to some money in campus coffers and to friendships like Courtney and Tony's.
Yeah, we've done breakfast, lunch, dinner, caring about her projects, My feeling is that she's going to be really awesome.
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, we explore the trend of colleges opening up senior living residences next to or even right on campus. What's in it for the schools, what's in it for the senior citizens, and what happens when baby boomers and Gen Z students coexist. Bloomberg's Elizabeth Rembert met Courtney and Tony a few months ago on a visit to Lacell University in Massachusetts.
Courtney, when you decided to go to school here, were you surprised that.
There was this element on campus? And you know, I had kind of heard of it, but I didn't really know what it truly was, because I was like, I was just a bunch of houses down at the bottom street the Bottoma Hill. Yeah, just as much as I do.
Those houses sit on La Cell's fifty four acre campus near Boston, so really prime real estate, and that's part of what makes Lacelle an appealing place for retirees like Tony to move in.
So this set up started with the vision of the president of the school. At that point, President Tom DeWitt, and he saw this unused parcel of land on the l Sell University's campus. He wanted to use it to bring more money onto the school's back sheets. At that point,
they were a community college. They were kind of struggling, and President DeWitt saw it as an opportunity to bring on some more income, but also as a way to kind of further its education mission and bring on these seniors who really had this interest in lifelong learning, wanted to be a part of this vibrant campus life and kind of live out their golden years on a college campus.
So they can live in this community and take classes at the college.
Yes, exactly, I've signed up to.
Take a juggling course and the other one is a.
History of hip hop.
Lacelle Village opened back in two thousand. In addition to juggling and hip hop history courses, the university offers mentorship programs, pairing villagers like Tony with students like Courtney. When Elizabeth met her in the spring, Courtney was a college senior.
Just as soon as you see Tony and Courtney, you can tell that they have a very close relationship.
She's like a grandchild, my second grandmother, and I feel like it's been in my life this whole time.
That's so heartwarming.
How common is this retirees or seniors living in communities on college campuses.
I talk to an expert who kind of tracks these communities. He calls them university retirement communities, and he estimates that there's about eighty five across the country. The different ways that they play out in these places can vary, and so there's places like Lacelle Village at Lasell University, which is very educational. It's on campus, the residents have to sign up for four hundred and fifty hours of annual learning.
And then there's other places the University of Alabama. I think they have one on campus, but there's not the same like educational requirements. And then there's other places like in Florida at the universities there where there will be a retirement community just off of campus. Well, Elizabeth, I'm wondering if you could give us a little back story here. When did this movement of seniors and college students cohabitating
start in the US. It started in the nineteen eighties, according to the experts that I talked to, and it really started at Iowa State University and Indiana University, where basically retired alumni, faculty, college presidents, we're saying, we loved this place, We gave our careers to this place. What am I going to do now that I'm retiring. I
still want to be attached to this community. And so they started nearby senior living facilities that grew into more establish places when the schools would partner with senior living operators, and so it kind of just started as this informal place where people can stay close to these places they care about so much. But now I think it's kind of gaining steam more of a business model as schools contend with a really challenging landscape in higher education right now.
One of the biggestallenges for colleges right now is a drop in enrollment numbers. Researchers are predicting that high school graduating class sizes peaked in twenty twenty five, that from now on, graduating class sizes are just going to fall. That's in part because birth rates dropped around the two thousand and eight financial crisis. In eighteen years later, that drop is hitting college enrollment. Fewer students means less tuition and less revenue for these schools in the next decade.
That could force as many as three hundred and seventy private colleges in the US to close or to merge. According to a major higher education consulting firm called Huron Consulting Group, that would impact some six hundred thousand students.
And so the drop that we've already seen. At least forty colleges have closed or announced plans to close since twenty twenty, so we've already seen the effects playing out among small colleges, and some research suggests that under a worst case drop in enrollment, assuming a fifteen percent drop in perspective students, we could see as many as eighty additional colleges closing. People are saying that schools really need to be thinking about bold ideas to remain afloat in
these challenging times. And we know that as the high school graduates go down, you know, America is getting older, the amount of retirees is going up.
And that wave of aging Americans, the so called silver tsunami, needs retirement friendly housing. The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care, a nonprofit, estimates that the US will need over eight hundred and six thousand new retirement units by twenty thirty. Elizabeth says her sources have told her that more and more universities are seeing that as an opportunity and asking questions about how they can get their own senior living community started.
So this is kind of a natural demographic play if you're trying to think about where can we find new customers.
Here's how these deals tend to work. A college will generally lease its land or share its branding or services with a retirement community and independently run private residence that opens up on or near its campus. In many cases, like LaSells, the university offers retirees access to the schools courses and amenities. In rare cases, the schools have full or partial ownership of the retirement communities. In exchange for sharing their land, branding, or services, the schools collect payments.
High Ed really needs to start thinking outside the box.
That's my Kopis the vice president for administration at Purchase College, a state university in Westchester County, New York. In twenty twenty three, a senior living community called Broadview opened up on campus.
There's pretty much a land lease agreement, so they run forty acres least forty acres from the college or from the State of New York. The State of New York, through a legislative process, agreed to the terms as long as that money came back in the form of scholarship money and faculty support.
Part of how it supports education at purchase is that the senior living facility pays two million dollars a year to the college, and seventy five percent of that is for student scholarships, and then twenty five percent of that is towards supporting faculty.
So it gives us additional scholarship money. In the times where it state support's been fantastic, but you know there's a little uncertainty with the administrations, could be a change of administration. This is real dollars coming to the campus that you can count on on a yearly basis.
Broadview has two hundred and twenty independent living apartments and villas, plus additional assisted living and memory care facilities. According to Broadview's website, residents pay a one time entrance fee plus a monthly fee. The entrance fee can range from two hundred and seventy thousand dollars to about two point five million dollars depending on the unit, and it's partially repaid to residents or their estates after they move out or
pass away. Elizabeth says, for retirees who opt into these programs, the cell is about more than just a roof over their heads.
The people that I talk to say that today's retirees they don't want just a pretty place to live. They want to continue their hobbies, they want to be lifelong learners. They're really in search of these vibrant places and activities, and colleges can provide those natural programs for them that really fill their days. And the residents that I talked to said that they did like the you know, around
young people, keeping them vibrant. And then the students really do cherish those relationships like Courtney and Tony, those friendship relationships, but also the mentoring that can come and the networking that can come.
Elizabeth says things have been going well since seniors first moved on to Purchase College's campus two years ago.
Their residents seem really excited by the programs that they get to do as a part of members of the college campus community. Purchase has a really big performing arts scene. I talk to a Day's professor, and she said that that's been really helpful for her students because it's been kind of a built in audience for these performers. They can get used to dancing in front of an audience.
Bigger audiences for student performances, strong intergenerational friendships. This all sounds really great, but at some schools the setup has come with growing pains.
So denied a big rulelane in a battle over noise that's after the break.
In early twenty twenty one, a group of senior citizens moved into Mirabella, a residential community on Arizona State University's main campus near Phoenix.
Mirabella boasts aqua.
Fitness exercise classes, access to the university's five million book library, and the opportunity to audit university courses on everything from woodworking to salsa dancing.
It all sounded great, but.
There was some ten between their senior living community on campus. It was right next to a music venue that was really loud.
Mirabella and its residents sued the music venue for incessant and unrelenting noise. ABC fifteen, a local station, interviewed Mirabella residents, capturing their frustration at the time they played.
Music so loud where we live right here, and it kept.
Us away, But some students argued that the campus was meant to serve them, not the senior citizens who'd moved in next door. One student wrote an op ed in the college newspaper criticizing the school for investing in the wrong things, prioritizing Mirabella and the financial profits it brought over the needs of its students, and one local resident voiced similar concerns in another interview with ABC fifteen, why are we building a fifty five plus community on ASU campus?
Like this place should be able to have concerts because it's on ASU campus.
Eventually, Mirabella and the Venue settled the lawsuit and the venue promised to implement new sound mitigation measures, and other ASU students have praised Mirabella for the new programs and unexpected friendships that's brought to campus. Elizabeth says snags like that lawsuit aside, these programs can also be challenging to get off the ground to begin with, even when both parties are bought in, it.
Is an unlikely pair.
In some ways, schools tend to be these very bureaucratic, slow moving institutions, where senior housing companies are often pretty shareholder driven, so they want results fast and thinking about the timeline specifically of like Broadview and Purchase College. Purchase College started floating the idea in the early two thousands and doors opened in December twenty twenty three. So the experts that I spoke to said that patience is a big part of it, and.
These arrangements aren't a good fit for every small college that's struggling to stay float. For one thing, the school needs to have enough land to lease out a chunk of it, and it helps if it's near a big population center like Boston, New York City, or Phoenix, Arizona.
Unfortunately, it's not a silver bullet for the really challenging landscape of higher education right now.
Are these programs enough to tip away at some of the financial and enrollment issues that universities across the country are facing and to address the shortage of retirement units? How would you assess this as an approach for solving both of these.
Problems on the college side. When I talk to the president of Lacelle and Folks on the Purchase College side of things, they said that the revenue that's coming in from the management contractor from the land lease from these senior living communities. It's not a huge part of their balance sheet, but it does free up other money for them, so it can be a tool. It's not going to save the day, I think for these really large, just nationwide challenges. And then as far as the retirement housing side,
it can be a partnership. This is a niche. It's a niche of people who would want to live on a college campus. It's a niche of It does tend to be a more expensive option as far as senior living housing, but there's got to be lots of options to solve the housing crisis and the gap in how much senior living communities we need versus we have right now.
Tony Miller told Elizabeth that she's found a home on campus at Lacel Village.
Retirement community is a place to go and die.
And here it's definitely people come and they're going to.
Live it up to the end. Yeah, and that makes a big difference.
Courtney Tello graduated from Lasell University in the spring, but she's still on campus getting her master's degree and assistant coaching the field hockey team, and she and Tony have stayed close.
I told Tony that I'm gonna crash arm how it's actually moving in a degree, doesn't I'm going anywhere?
Okay, so you two will continue to stage.
Yeah, okay.
When I was talking to the students and the residents, it would come back to realizing, you know, we're not so different when you're in the same space, when you're both trying to learn Spanish or you're just trying to make a friend on a college campus. When those types of bonds can become stronger than just the assumptions that you might have looking at someone, it melts away and then you realize this is a friend, or this is a fellow student who we're both trying to learn Spanish.
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. The show is hosted by Me, David gera janj and Seleiah Mosen. The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor Harrison, Dengate, Patti Hirsch, Rachel Lewis, Kristymi In, Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven, Alex Sugia, Julia Weaver, Yang Yong, and Taka Yasuzawa. To get more from the Big Take, and unlimited access to all of bloomberg dot Com. Subscribe today at Bloomberg dot Com. Slash podcast offer.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday m