Over the past decade, the population of Americans who are 65 or older has grown faster than the total population, the Census Bureau says. Virginia state law, which recognized the dwellings a few years ago, classifies them as "temporary family health-care structures." But many simply know them as "granny pods," and they have arrived on the market as the nation prepares for a wave of graying baby boomers to retire. The MedCottage, designed by a Blacksburg, Va., company with help from Virginia Tech, is essentially a portable hospital room. ![]() Their decision exposed intergenerational friction that worsened after the new dwelling arrived. Her relatives agonized over the best way to care for Viola after her ability to care for herself became questionable. ![]() Viola stayed the night, then another, and another, until summer had turned to fall.Īs the first private inhabitant of a MedCottage, Viola is a reluctant pioneer in the search for alternatives to nursing homes for aging Americans. As temperatures and tempers soared in the main house, Viola's family coaxed her into the cottage to cool off. "You're throwing me out! You're sending me out to a doghouse! Why not put me in a manicomio?" Viola, 88, told them, using the Spanish word for madhouse. ![]() She told her family she would rather continue living in the family's dining room than move into the shed-size dwelling that had been lowered by crane into the backyard of their Fairfax County, Va., home. Her daughter's family had just invested about $125,000 in a new kind of home for her, a high-tech cottage that might revolutionize the way Americans care for their aging relatives.
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