Why Villages?
Alicia Juarrero
Why Villages?
I've been musing a bit about the "Villages" now running or trying to
start up. Why "villages" and why now? I'm neither an historical
determinist nor a subscriber to the "Great Person" theory. Yet, major
movements don't spring up Athena-like. They have their political and
cultural roots. What are they for villages? Others will have their
own explanations. I have three plus an outlier:
1. Eagerness not to repeat history;
2. A partial denial of "Bowling Alone";
3. The "village generation" casting a nuanced, and jaundiced, eye on
what government can and can't do well; and,
4. Inevitably, highly personal reasons.
What is a Village?
First, define terms. What do I mean by a "village"? And what do they
do? My answer is reasonably enough grounded in my work on creating
Capitol Hill Village, in Washington, DC. A "village" offers the means
for people to stay in their homes as they age; it offers "staying
power," as nicely bumper-stickered by Rocky Curtis, from a village
(Mount Vernon at Home) being built in Hollin Hills, Va. The specifics
of a village can vary considerably, from a minimum cost village, such
as the Community without Walls, in Princeton, NJ, to the considerably
pricier ones, not least my own.
How many villages so far? I have no idea. I do know that 13
communities from the Washington, DC area were represented at a recent
conference convened by the DC chapter of AARP. With that datum I
wouldn't be surprised if between 50 and 75 villages were open for
business or, in most cases, struggling into being. The "godparent"
for them all is Beacon Hill Village, in business since 2001.
However diverse, most villages have a few things in common in that
they:
· Offer "services", from arranging social gatherings to much more
elaborate offerings, some included in the basic membership fee and
some add-ons. For particulars, look at the Capitol Hill Village and
Beacon Hill sites;
· Struggle financially, to get start-up funds so staff can be hired
and to keep going;
· Arose from within their home communities; they are not products of
the elder-care industry;
· Are populated, oddly enough, by many members who make quite modest
use of the services, and some not at all; and,
· Are rooted in communities rich in social capital. Elaborating,
villages communities seem to be the kind of places the sociologist
Robert Putnam described in 1995. (True academic style, but I think
the point is clear):
o Life is easier in a community blessed with a substantial stock of
social capital. In the first place, networks of civic engagement
foster sturdy norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage the
emergence of social trust. Such networks facilitate coordination and
communication, amplify reputations, and thus allow dilemmas of
collective action to be resolved. When economic and political
negotiation is embedded in dense networks of social interaction,
incentives for opportunism are reduced. At the same time, networks of
civic engagement embody past success at collaboration, which can serve
as a cultural template for future collaboration. Finally, dense
networks of interaction probably broaden the participants' sense of
self, developing the "I" into the "we," or (in the language of
rational-choice theorists) enhancing the participants' "taste" for
collective benefits
OK. Get to the point. Why villages? Here goes:
Eagerness not to repeat history
The "history" is a shared one: "Up close and personal" experiences
with two common stops on the way to the end, mainly assisted living
facilities and nursing homes. Many of us have decided they're not for
us, at least not yet.
· Yes, they have their plusses. Good care. Relentless streams of
quotidian social programs. Much comfort (never mind a frisson of
guilt relief) to siblings and friends that a loved one is cared for
and watched.
· But, then, everyone at these places is close in age and all marking
time to the end, sensing "the ratio of the body to the void
shifting" (Louise Glück). And they can be ferociously expensive and
becoming more so. Without long-term insurance -with costly premiums -
bankruptcy is not uncommon and Medicaid must be applied for, which for
many, after a lifetime of hard work and achievement, is a
humiliation.
· Entering these facilities often means leaving the communities in
which a life was spent. Yes, there are efforts to keep the bonds; but
inevitably the richness of community life weakens and then is gone.
This is obviously personal opinion, but I suspect that fellow
"villagers", explicitly or not, have thought about some of these
realities and have decided there has be something better. They don't
want to repeat the history of their parents.
A partial denial of "Bowling Alone";
Sociologist Robert Putnam wrote in 1995 that "Something has happened
to diminish civic engagement and social connectedness." He argued in
an essay and then in a book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival
of American Community, that in effect Americans are less prone to
join together in associations, epitomized famously in his observation
that while more Americans are bowling fewer are joining bowling
leagues.
"Bowling Alone" invoked many criticisms that in turn Robert Putnam has
vigorously defended. For me, the best responses are the villages and
their proof that for many American places their social capital is rich
indeed. A village is not possible without a community. That was true
for Capitol Hill, certainly so for Beacon Hill.
More Americans may indeed be bowling alone. But ever more Americans
are now unwilling to grow old alone or to sentence themselves to the
artificial life of "senior-care communities".
The "village generation" casting a nuanced, and jaundiced, eye on what
government can and can't do well
Here is a gallop through recent US history that is cartoonish but may
be about right. The two tenets of modern liberalism are enabling full
participation of all citizens in American society and restraints
against excesses of government. Government was a great liberalizing
force from the New Deal and well into the 1950s in expanding rights
and empowering those excluded or marginalized from full participation
in our society (women, blacks,); i.e. in much of the lifetimes of our
parents. Government got things done: Won World War II and the Cold
War, created a superb highway system, gave us, the GI Bill, Social
Security. Our parents were the "long civic generation", (Putnam,
natch) vigorously engaged until the 1960s in civic work at all
levels.
Disillusionment came in the late 1950s and gained force in the decades
that followed; i.e., our generation. Many examples: Vietnam, the
seeming failure of the War on Poverty, Katrina, Iraq, a health
insurance "system" that barely works, regulatory failures that led to,
say, Enron.
Our generation, then, is now quite realistic about the capabilities
and incapabilities of government. And we've decided that one thing we
cannot trust government to do is decide for us how we want to spend
the rest of our lives. We've decided that we have to do this for
ourselves. Yes, there is the elder-care industry, but see above.
Inevitably, highly personal reasons
Whether or not you buy any of my arguments, each of us also had our
own quite personal reasons for becoming a "villager". What were mine?
I have lived on Capitol Hill since the late 1960s, married in 1972,
and with my wife have lived for almost 40 years in two houses on the
Hill, moving from one to the other in 1996, to show, I half-jokingly
tell people, that I was not totally sessile. Sometime in the 1980s, I
wondered aloud whether we should think of moving on retirement to a
"small university town". Nancy, a very wise woman, listened, said
little, and waited for the epiphany. It came. I came to understand
that we were swimming in something very precious: A neighborhood that
was also a community charged by energy, exuberance, terrific people
(ok, not all terrific, but still a piquant seasoning), and much caring
for each other. Yes, we had, and still have, lots of problems: crime,
schools, developers wanting to do crummy things in our historic
district, tensions of the poor and the rich (not us) butting against
each other. But, rather than walking away - that "small university
town" - most of us chose to stand and deliver, to create programs, be
engaged, volunteer. A volunteer for Capitol Hill Village pointed out
in one of our two community newspapers that we spent much of our lives
on the Hill creating organizations and working on community needs to
help our kids and our neighbors. Now we've earned the right to now do
something for ourselves, in creating Capitol Hill Village.
So, Capitol Hill is a place I never want to leave because there is no
better there there. I've visited nursing homes and other senior care
places. While I logically understand their reason for being, they are
for me places that however sugar-coated lay down a regimented life
utterly antipodal to the rich and vibrant and engaged life of Capitol
Hill.
That's why.
_______________________________________
Norman Metzger
638 G Street, SE
Washington, D.C. 20003-2724
202/544-6027 (voice and fax)
202/445-5436 (cell)
norman...@verizon.net