This is an impressively planned city, much like Canberra(!). The Capitol Hill district runs between Capitol Hill and the Washington Monument. The green National Mall joins the two book-end monuments and it is flanked on each side by very impressive Government and Museum buildings. It is a very impressive site – the equal of the great European cities. It looks fantastic at night with the buildings lit up.
As grand as the architecture is, the service at times is terrible. I’m still having trouble with cab drivers and waiters etc. It offends me to find people who are so poorly attuned to the needs of visitors to the country, particularly as there are thousands of us. If you know what you’re doing and know exactly how something works, you’re fine. But if you want some explanation or something out of the ordinary, too many people switch off their customer service ”façade” at this point. Or maybe I just expect too much…..
We visited the Capitol Hill Village (CHV). They are a membership-based community association, dedicated to enabling the older people of the Capitol Hill area to remain in their own homes for as long as they can. This organisation is like a NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community) except for the fact that Capitol Hill Village membership is open to all age groups while a NORC is more like a self-help organisation for older people.
CHV raises funds from membership and fundraising and then provides volunteer support to people to take them to appointments, get repairs done to their homes, provide companionship etc. This sort of community association is of interest to me because I was responsible for trying to establish them in the UK before I escaped to Australia. CHV links into other service providers, health facilities etc to try to package together supports for people.
At one level, there is nothing too remarkable about this for us. Our own organisations are providing similar community supports to help people stay at home and we have locally-based community organisations in WA who do something very similar to CHV.
Having said this, there are points of interest here. First, Kathie from CHV pointed out to us that they are essentially supporting people “stuck in the middle”. These are older people who don’t have so much money that they can pay for all the support services they need privately but, unfortunately for them, neither do they have assets that are so low that they qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. So, they are the “asset rich, income poor” group we are familiar with and they have trouble being able to stay put through older age.
Now this segues nicely into the second point of interest. Kathie explained that these older people don’t just want to stay living in their own homes, they want to stay living in their own community. At one level, they could relieve their predicament by divesting themselves of their current assets so as to qualify for benefits, but that would require them to sell up and move from their own community. Of course, this is a special, if not a unique community, right next to Capitol Hill in Washington.
It was good to visit CHV because it provided a diametrically opposed proposition to that of Erickson Communities. The members of CHV are passionate about staying living near Capitol Hill for as long as they can. Poorly serviced and isolated, as they may be. On the other hand, the people who had moved to the Erickson Communities seemed very happy with their choice, which was delivering so much to do and so many people to mix with.
You can go round the world, but fundamentals remain the same. Choice is the thing or the thang as we say round here.
By the way, that was our last visit and not to put too fine a point on it – Vaughan and I are knackered.
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