Why I Do Not Like Retirement Homes

I do not like retirement homes.

There, I said it.

I understand why they exist. I understand the economics, the healthcare efficiencies, and the reassurance they give children and grandchildren who worry about aging parents living alone.

But after spending the last two years traveling through Japan’s longevity hotspots researching healthy lifespan, community, and aging, I am uneasy with the idea of separating older people from the normal rhythm of society and placing them into single-generation environments. It happened to my mother, and it was not pleasant to watch, even harder for her to experience.

As I observe rural Japan’s longevity hotspots, the more convinced I become that healthy aging is not simply about healthcare, diet, exercise, or medication. It is about remaining inside the circle, not parked outside it.

A few weeks ago, I heard someone who inspects nursing homes in Japan say that the first thing he does as he passes through the entrance of a seniors home is do the “sniff test.” I chuckled because I knew exactly what he meant and brought back unpleasant memories.

Growing up, I visited aging relatives in institutional care with my father, and those places always had a distinctly unpleasant smell. smell. Not necessarily filthy or neglected, just an institutional body odor that somehow seeped into the walls, carpets, and elevators. As a child, I found it off-putting.

Growing up, I dreaded visiting elderly relatives in institutional care. not just because of the smell, but the places felt heavy, stale, and disconnected from ordinary life. They smelled and felt different from the world I lived in. Even as a child, I sensed I was entering a waiting room between life and death rather than a living community.

We say retirement villages are fine because family members can visit. But often they do not want to. Or if they do, the visit is a forced obligation rather than a natural part of life. People arrive, perform the duty, then escape back to what feels like the “real world.”  That sounds harsh, but many know exactly what I mean.

This is not merely an uncomfortable childhood memory. It became deeply personal when my own mother moved into a single-generation retirement community a few years ago. I was there the day she moved alongside my brother and sister.

It seemed pleasant enough. There were common areas, a restaurant, organized activities, smiling staff, and different stages of care. Independent living gradually transitioned into assisted living, then full care, and finally hospice. But there was an ever-present sense that our mother was now formally on an escalator, slowly exiting life.

Then came COVID. For several months, my mother experienced no human touch. She heard voices, but little else. At one point, she cracked open her door to peek into the hallway, and a male voice boomed down the corridor: “Stay in your room.”  The intention was safety, but safety meant isolation.

Eventually, the restrictions eased, and residents could socialize again, mostly with one another inside the same aging ecosystem. My sister, who lives locally, visited most often and was the official family liaison. She was wonderful with the residents. She has the kind of personality that makes people laugh, smile, and engage. My brother, who lived several hours away, also visited regularly and could still get my mother to sing and giggle.

I was the least frequent visitor, living an ocean away, which was manageable at first because we could communicate via Skype. But during COVID, her dementia accelerated to the point where she could no longer meaningfully engage digitally.

That experience reinforced something I had already begun suspecting through my travels in Japan: I do not believe single-generation communities are ideal environments for healthy aging.

Japan now has one of the oldest populations in the world, with nearly 30 percent of its population over age 65.[1] At the same time, multigenerational households have steadily declined over recent decades. In 1980, roughly half of elderly Japanese lived with their children. Today, it is closer to one in ten.[2] Meanwhile, elderly-only households continue to rise sharply.[3]

The result is a society increasingly efficient at caring for older people, but not always successful at integrating them into daily communal life. It gives me even greater urgency and conviction to study the patterns of the current cohort of super agers, as they may well be the last generation formed by older community structures that are now disappearing.

Research consistently shows that social isolation significantly increases the risks of dementia, depression, cardiovascular disease, and early mortality.[4] During COVID, many countries discovered that protecting older people from physical risk sometimes came at the terrible cost of emotional and relational deprivation. Japan even has a word that reflects the darker edge of this trend: kodokushi, which means “lonely death.” Thousands of people each year die alone and remain undiscovered for days or even weeks.[5]

To be clear, I am not blaming retirement villages, nor am I criticizing the many dedicated people who work inside them.

This is not an attack on caregivers. It is a question about social architecture.  Because it need not be this way.

I am not arguing for a return to the so-called “good old days” or to some romanticized past. The question is how we preserve the best parts of our traditions and social DNA while adapting intelligently for the future. How can we create intergenerational environments for seniors to live in the changing world we find ourselves in?

It can be done!

My first exposure to a positive model of senior homes was in the 1970s when my father was minister of a downtown church in Canada. Connected to the church stood a ten-story apartment building for seniors. Yes, there was an age limit, and yes, it was specifically for older members of the church community. But here was the difference: the Seniors Tower was intertwined with the life of the wider community.

In the 1970s, many people attended church not just regularly, but frequently, often multiple times a week. There were Sunday services, morning and evening, youth groups, weddings, concerts, committee meetings, prayer gatherings, and endless social events.  Children and grandchildren naturally flowed back and forth between the church, the community hall, and the seniors' apartments, where their parents, grandparents, and relatives lived.

I dated a girl whose grandmother lived in the towers. Some of our dates involved sitting in her grandmother’s small apartment after a church function, laughing, playing games, and looking out at the landmark church steeple and the city lights beyond.

I could tell my mother that both grandmother and granddaughter relished their time together. The point is this: the towers never felt like a holding pen for old people. The residents were connected, integrated, alive. The elderly residents were still inside the social fabric, not removed from it.

Culture has changed, of course, but the importance of intergenerational, meaningful engagement remains critically needed for both old and young. Not occasional supervised visits. Not token events where children sing Christmas carols once a year. Real interaction. Shared space. Shared rhythm. Shared life.

And this is what I repeatedly observe in Japan’s healthier aging communities.

Older people remain visible inside ordinary society far longer. They are still engaged and visible in shops, festivals, walking groups, morning Taiso in parks,  karaoke gatherings, shrines, fishing ports, neighborhood associations, local cafés, farms, and volunteer groups. They remain within the community's circular flow rather than being entirely separated from it and placed on a one-way conveyor belt of increasingly irrelevance and disengagement.

Retirement villages can be beautifully designed physically, but poorly designed socially.

The architecture can be attractive, the landscaping neat, and the healthcare systems may even be efficient. But the underlying philosophy often assumes that older people primarily belong with other older people.

What if that assumption itself is part of the problem?

The issue is not whether retirement communities should exist. The issue is whether they can be designed differently, not as age-segregated islands, but as places genuinely part of the wider life of the community. 

A starting point is to think outside the box and ask questions. Here is some I have wondered about.

Could retirement communities be intentionally built beside schools, cafés, libraries, sports centers, coworking spaces, or community hubs?

Could students receive subsidized accommodation by living alongside seniors?

Could childcare centers and eldercare facilities share common gardens and kitchens?

Could older people mentor younger entrepreneurs, artists, or young families?

Could festivals, meals, and community rituals become part of ordinary life rather than occasional programming?

Could aging remain inside the circle instead of being placed onto a conveyor belt slowly heading toward the exit?

You may think it is easy to say “yes, why not?” but then comes the harder question: how? Thankfully, some are beginning to ask this in a thoughtful and sophisticated way. I take heart that innovation is on its way. I am glad of that as one thing is for sure: people age better when connected, part of a circle rather than standing on a one-way escalator toward the exit. Not merely cared for. But needed. Seen. Included. Part of the ongoing story.

If this article stimulated your thinking, you may also be interested in my reflections on the nuclear family and the price we may be paying for increasingly linear models of community.

https://www.nevertoolateacademy.com/post/the-hidden-cost-of-the-nuclear-family

About the Author

Lowell Sheppard is a long-term resident of Japan, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, founder of Never Too Late Academy, and Special Advisor to the International Academic Forum (IAFOR). Over the past several years, he has traveled extensively across Japan by bicycle, train, ferry, and sailboat, researching longevity, healthy lifespan, and the role of community in aging well.

He is the author of ten books, including the forthcoming Longevity and the Art of Community: Lessons from Japan, which explores what modern societies can learn from Japan’s remaining pockets of strong intergenerational culture and healthy aging. His work combines field research, personal narrative, and cultural observation, with a particular focus on the growing gap between lifespan and healthy lifespan.

Lowell currently lives between mainland Japan and the remote islands of Kagoshima Prefecture, where he continues to write, consult, and document Japan’s longevity hotspots,

Endnotes

1. Statistics Bureau of Japan, “Statistical Handbook of Japan 2024,” population aging data.

2. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (Japan), trends in multigenerational households, 1980–2020.

3. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan), Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions.

4. Holt-Lunstad, Julianne et al., “Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2015; and World Health Organization reports on aging and social connection.

5. National Police Agency of Japan and multiple reporting summaries on kodokushi (“lonely deaths”) trends, 2024–2025.

6. For broader context on healthy lifespan versus lifespan in Japan, see WHO Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) data and Dr. S. Jay Olshansky's work on the compression of morbidity.

7. Observations on intergenerational interaction and aging patterns are drawn from the author’s field research across Japan during 2024–2026, conducted while researching longevity communities and healthy lifespan.