A Fairfax County (VA) official dubbed it "The Granny Pod.’ He can’t stand the invention a Virginia minister created to help people live at home when they need long-term care. But others look at it and say it’s ingenuity for the Age Wave and a person’s desire to live at home.
What do you think of the MEDCottage (it’s not actually called the Granny Pod)?
A little background . . . According to a Washington Post article:
Rev. Kenneth Dupin, who leads a small Methodist church in Southern Virginia, has a vision: As America grows older, its aging adults could avoid a jarring move to the nursing home by living in small, specially equipped, temporary shelters close to relatives . . .
As senior minister at what was then Aldersgate Wesleyan Church in Falls Church, Dupin visited a shut-in named Katie. Her husband had served in the Eisenhower administration, and she liked to show off photographs of them dancing at a White House ball.
On one visit, Dupin found Katie in tears. Her adult children had arranged for her to go into a nursing home. Workmen were busy fixing up her home for sale. When he later visited her at the nursing home, she was miserable.
"When I got there, she was absolutely devastated, and she asked me if I could take her home. That stuck in my head — the patheticness of it," Dupin said.
The MEDCottage, like an RV, could be hooked up to a house’s electrical and water system. It could be wired with sensors and other technology and would lease for about $2,000 per month. Interestingly, an online poll (non-scientific) you can take here shows a majority of people would buy it.