Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:26):
Your home is not just four walls. It's a living, beautiful,
breathing space that supports your health, your family, your life,
and even your future. What if the right design could
even ease the stress of caregiving. It could bring generations
closer together and allow aging adults to live with both dignity, safety,
(00:48):
comfort and independence. Well, today, I'm always ageless. We're diving
into a conversation that affects almost every family. How do
we create homes that truly work for us as we age?
My guess Rod Gantune has no stranger to this challenge,
that's for sure. He's a global hospitality and wellness designer
(01:10):
who has spent more than thirty years shaping experiences in hotels,
spas and communities around the world. But he's also turned
his creative eye towards some real issues that families face
every day, with things like ADUs, which is our auxiliary
dwelling units, generational living, multi generational living, and aging in place.
(01:35):
Knowing that scenery around you actually changes how you feel
in your home.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
And we learned something else.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Rod recently had a visit in Africa that actually changes life,
and we're actually going to have him talk about that.
Also So whether you're considering building an ADU for your
mom or dad, you're rethinking your own future home, or
you're just curious about how design impacts your life, this
conversation is going to inspire you to see your space
(02:02):
in a whole new way, and not with just buy it.
You don't have to be an expensive designer or hire
one either.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Rod.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
As you know, we've looked forward to having you on
our show for a very long time. We are so
glad we waited while you traveled around the world so
you can come back and be on always a just
welcome today to be on our show.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Thank you, Valerie. It's really a pleasure. Yes, we have
definitely been working on trying to make this happen for
a bit.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We have. We have given your history and your background.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Tell us a little bit about how it brought you
to caring about housing for aging adults and their families,
and you know, actually, let's don't do that.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Let's go first to your recent trip.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
I may have told you ever since I was a
little girl, my dream has gone in African Safari. When
you said you were going to Africa, I just was
so excited. I felt like I was going with you,
but I know that you talked about how that actually
was life changing. Yeah, and I know that you have
a show called The Red Life, which is focused also
on experiences that people have in their older years, just
(03:07):
like we do. Hear it always ageless. So let's talk
about your trip to Africa. What did that really mean
to you? What was it, what you hoped it would be.
What can our listeners.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Hear from you about that experience.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
It's a really good few questions and it's definitely makes
me think. I mean, going to Africa, the exotic nature
of the trip, the you know, the safari, the animals,
all that stuff is in itself pretty grand, right, And
to do it where you are maybe a transformational point
(03:42):
in your life or like you're you're wondering what's next,
so to speak. Right, I had just turned sixty in January,
and so to me and I don't feel quote unquote
whatever supposed sixty is supposed to feel like. But you know, right,
I mean, it's such a stupid thing with numbers. But
there was a layer to the experience of going to
(04:03):
Africa or doing that kind of excursion that also was
a little bit maybe deeper, like it was, it was
when I said, and I said to you, when you
asked me, I said, this was life changing. I think
it was life changing in that it was expansive first
and foremost. I think sometimes we get we feel we
(04:25):
forget that there's a whole world out there. There's a
whole world of experiences out there, and we are sort
of in our lane and we're so focused and we're
just like in this little microcosm of you know, where
we can thrive and we can, we can succeed, and
we can we can you know, keep our keep our cell,
(04:45):
you know, swim well for professionally or personally or whatever.
But there's a whole world out there, and sometimes it
actually helps expand the soul, expand the thinking. Even you
could even argue kind of like keep you more youthful
and curious honestly, right, Yeah, by actually just stepping outside
that comfort zone, stepping outside that that you know, four
(05:10):
defining parameters or boundaries, physical boundaries, whether it's county, whether
it's state, whether it's just your home. So Africa was
a very interesting experience. I was there for almost two weeks.
I then extended for another three or four days because
I wanted to interview a couple of people there. Again,
having been doing the rad Live show for about ten years,
(05:32):
I was now on the road and I wanted to
interview some interesting characters there. Even though our focus has
now been elevated after ten years of interviewing anybody that
we liked are curious about, I think that's still an
underlying current. It's like whatever I'm interested in as I
get older. When we first started, the focus was on
(05:54):
like say, baby boomers and issues that were aging related.
But then we we that very easily became an age
exploration of things that as I got older was interesting
to me. People I encountered the experiences and I would
bring them to share. So this was kind of in
that same line. And it was with the gentleman who
(06:14):
basically had the put you know, the company together for
the Safarias and was being very successful and his background
was interesting, so I interviewed him. I also, for those
who know, I will occasionally, you know, partake and enjoy
a good cigar. So I found a manufacturer of cigars
in Zimbabwe. These two gentlemen were in Zimbabwe, made from
(06:37):
Zimbabwe and tobacco. Who knew that there was such a
thing as tobacco in Zimbabwe that was grown. I thought
everything was in North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And how was it.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Let's just say that it was satisfactory while I was there.
And the joke actually was with the gentleman who had
the factory, who, by the way, in another story of reinvention,
reinvented himself like five years ago when he decided he
was going to do a cigar company. Up till that point,
he had never smoked a cigar and had were working
(07:06):
for Delta out of Atlanta. And so he went. He
went to Cuba, he went to Nicaraguay, he saw how
those factories were set up. He brought somebody who would
help him, and they set up a little factory in Zimbabwe,
in the capital of Harari. And so when I when
I first sampled his cigars, I was not in Harari,
but I happened to be sitting at a dinner table
(07:27):
at a restaurant with the gentleman who runs the Safari Company,
and the gentleman Safari Company, when I told him, Hey,
I just found these cigars. It's interesting. I don't even
know are they made here? What's the deal? He goes, Oh,
I know the guy who owns the company, and he
connected me with him at one WhatsApp right there at
the dinner table, and so I jokingly said to the guy,
I said, you know, I have a bone to pick
(07:49):
with you. Your cigars are dry, I said, But I
said I but I said, I need to come to
your factory and basically complain in person. That was my
sort of introduction to it. But the reason, I mean,
to be fair to his product. It was just not
in a humid or in the gift shop there where
I found it at the restaurant, so it but yeah,
I mean that was sort of another experience, and it
was you know, when I say life changing, Africa was
(08:11):
life changing. It wasn't life changing in that I had
never experienced this kind of serendipity or alignment of things.
But when you're younger, I think you do it almost subconsciously.
You don't have a clarity or an intentionality like this
is sort of the thing that resonates with you. This,
(08:34):
this this rhythm is actually an alignment with who you are.
You just happen to do what you're doing. You haven't
sat still long enough to really understand that this is
part of your credo. So when I went to Africa.
I was already kind of along those lines, and when
it was happening and unfolding with me, whether it was
from you know, this gentleman that that was doing the
(08:57):
far is who then basically happens to know this guy
with thear company. And then when I went to the
meet with the guy with a cigar company, I was
flying through Johannesburg and he said, oh, would you want
to have you know that one day or three cours
of the day that you were there, would you like
to have somebody show you around joe Burg? And I
said sure, And in the course of doing that, I
then basically ended up going to the Nelson Mandela House
(09:19):
and seeing the museum in Soweto and seeing the dualities
and the parallels that they're like from from extreme one
extreme to the other in South Africa and Johannesburg itself,
just in terms of from one neighborhood to another neighborhood right,
and how people are living there. And then we happened
(09:40):
to sit at a coffee shop waiting till my flight.
You know, we have to have to kick me to
the airport, and he said, well, let me introduce you
to this friend of mine who basically happens to live
down the street. Maybe he'll come and have a beer
with us or something. I said, sure, So he comes over,
and this guy basically starts talking about how in his
thirties he actually did he quit his job, sold everything
(10:00):
was in an agency in Germany, and basically got on
a motorcycle because he had just done a motorcycle trip
with his best friend and it had it had a
timeline like when it started when it finished, and he
felt like that was too short, so he wanted to
get on another motorcycle ride and not have an end
date in mind, and ended and ended up taking motorcycle
(10:24):
ride across Europe, through Asia, down to Australia, over to
Africa and back up to Germany and it ended when
it ended, and how that was very life changing, and
how he perceives and interacts with life after he did
that trip. And here I was basically encountering these people
that were again reminding me about reinvention, whether it was
(10:48):
a reinvention in terms of their career choice or reinvention
by coming back to their country and basically, you know,
putting out not only an enterprise but one that had
a social consciousness that actually helped people. And then here's
this guy who now basically is stationed in South Africa,
who had gone back to Germany, worked whatever, and now
he's writing a history book and consulting from overseas. So
(11:12):
life changing in that it reminded me just how expansive
the world is and how limitless our options really are,
and that we are the ones who get to decide
what is the life that we want to design on
our own terms. At any point in our life, we're
faced with adversity, we're faced with loss, we're faced with challenges,
(11:35):
but we always remain You know, one of my favorite
mantras right now, and it's actually sitting on the new
magazine that we just launched for this issue, is freedom. Always.
You always have freedom to decide how to design your
life on your own terms. It doesn't mean that, you know,
it's an excuse for selfishness or an excuse for basically
(11:58):
hurting people in the process, but it's a very wide
space in which you take and you give your actually
you give your permission to actually design your life on
your own terms and not be coming at it from
a place of scarcity or fear, but actually from a
place of abundance and positive potential. And that's the that's
(12:23):
sort of the the when I say it was life changing.
And then I kind of like, you know, rubber stamped
it and kind of like just sealed it with with
a with an action at the end. Because unbeknownst to
anybody who was on my on the trip with me,
I extended those four days and one thing in my
mind was maybe I'll bungee jump off the Victoria Falls Bridge. Now,
(12:44):
for those who don't know, the Victoria Falls Bridge symbolically
also bridges one country to another, so imagine the symbolism.
You're in one spot and this bridge actually bridges like
Zimbabwe for from I'm gonna get it wrong. I mean
it's Zambia, I think it is, but it's like it
bridges that and it sits over one of the three
(13:06):
largest waterfalls in the world. Niagara is the other one,
and I forget where the third one is, but three waterfalls.
This is one of the three largest waterfalls in the
world and it is a on ESCO Cultural Site. And
I decided I was going to bungee jump off this bridge.
And when you bungee jump, For anybody who knows about
bungee jumping. You don't just walk up to the edge
(13:28):
and just kind of drop. You actually walk up to
the edge, and you got to propel yourself. You gotta
propel yourself off the bridge. Otherwise you may hit yourself
against the bridge. So you're consciously projecting yourself into the abyss,
if you will, right. And I did it because I
wanted to have a reference point physically, mentally, body memory,
(13:52):
emotionally tell us about that never done that before, never
done anything like that before. The colost thing is why
maybe I tend them want you know, uh, jumped out
of a plane, you know, skydive or a friend of
mine's birthday where a whole bunch of us when and
I was tethered to this guy. So I did that
because I had realized over the last say half a
(14:16):
year that we have an interesting relationship with uncertainty of
not knowing what the outcome is going to be, right,
but still taking the journey. Yes, And that uncertainty relationship
we have usually as adults is in direct contrast contrast
(14:36):
with this uncertainty relationship we have, or the relationship we
have with uncertainty and not knowing when we're children when
we're children, you wake up in the morning and you
don't know what the day is going to bring. Necessarily
you have the confines and protection of the family, whatever,
but you don't know what the day is going to bring,
and you you actually have a bit of excitement enjoy
(15:00):
about not knowing what the day is going to bring.
So when it happens, you're like, well, that was interesting
or wow, that was really great, Like there's a there's
a little wonder that happens, right, and a little little
little positive and darkness that happens out of the So
we don't embrace uncertainty as a thing to be worried about,
(15:22):
to feel anxious about, to be afraid of. We we
look at it as being possibility a little bit that
we don't know what that is and the and what happens.
When we get older and we take on like sort
of responsibilities and roles and what have you, we start
basically divining uncertainty as being something to be worried about,
(15:42):
something to put contingency plans against, things to basically work
towards trying to mitigate. The more less uncertain and ambiguous
something is, the more likely it will not disrupt our lives.
But when we do that, we do that at the
cost of losing that wonder that we had when our children.
(16:04):
And what I realized is, it's not that we no
longer have that muscle. It's that muscle of embracing uncertainty
with a certain positivity, not reckless, but still positive positivity.
That muscle still exists. It's just that it's a little
atrophied because we haven't used it for the better part
of the last say forty years. Right. And so when
(16:27):
when I realized that, and I wanted to change the
narrative on the fact that uncertainty is only grounds for
worrying and and fear. I wanted to have a benchmark
moment where I could refer to mind, body, memory, you know,
emotional soul, whatever, right you want to call it, that
(16:49):
manifest that was literally tangible. So jumping off the bridge
thirty nine stories of a drop, right three hundred and
ninety feet or so something like that was actually for
me something that now I can go back and refer
to if I face something during my day, my day
(17:10):
or whatever that seems overwhelming or whatever, by actually reminding
myself that, look, let's just be let's have a little
perspective here. You jumped off a bridge not knowing what
the outcome was going to be. You didn't take a
completely risk, you know, uncalculated risk, but you still did
that action. You still proceeded to follow through on something
(17:31):
that seemed like you didn't have one hundred percent control over.
So what you're facing right now, is it really the
big thing that you are making? Is it really the
thing that you are you know, either catastrophizing or your
mind just won't shut down and is constantly playing these
scenarios of negative thing. Is it really that? How does
(17:53):
it compare to you jumping off a bridge? Thirty nine stories?
You know, this is probably nothing compared to that. So
then it gives me an ability to reground and have perspective.
So again, how was the trip to Africa? It was
kind of life.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Changing, kind of life changing. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And while we're talking about Africa and people who can
do what they love, actually the world lost Jane Goodall today,
ninety one years old, and she lived a wonderful life
doing what she wanted to do, being in Africa with
the beautiful animals.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
And I grew up as a little girl, I wanted
to be a nurse in Africa.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
It's all I ever wanted to be and I never
made it there. Still haven't been in Africa, but that's
my dream vacation. So I'm working.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I'm working. I'm working on a Safari excursion under the
rad life. So sign me up, sign me up next
next year.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Certainly a lot of people before this current time went
and did amazing things, So let's talk back about housing
and design and how we can help our viewers and
our listeners be more comfortable and feel safe and secure
and more confident with their housing decisions right now. And
(19:06):
I really think that that is part of the issue,
is they just don't know what to do. And I
am convinced that many of us grew up not thinking
that we would be at this age caring for our
aging parents.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
We thought that, absolutely absolutely think of anything. Our parents
probably shielded us from when they did it for theirs,
which is well, except in.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
My case, I didn't have any grandparents after I was
eight years old, so I didn't I didn't go through that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Some kids did, but I didn't. I wasn't fortunate to
do that.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I mean, even even if you think about like ourselves, right,
if you have kids, you're not going to The ideal
scenario in your mind is you're not going to burden
them with something, right, So I think I think to
your point though, is people don't know. And part of
why they don't know is because in most cases maybe
either been spared that or maybe they have been not
(20:03):
physically around it, and it's not really part of life
until you experience it, Like like, you can't really explain
to somebody one hundred percent what it takes and what
the impacts are and how they ripple through your life
and your relationship. All this stuff when you are caring
for a parent who maybe has Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or
(20:25):
something like that. And I know people that are not
necessarily older that are dealing with that. There's some people
where they know their parents have early onset and so
they may be in their thirties and facing it. I
remember one time interviewing a gentleman on my show where
he was like in high school when his father basically
was going through this. So unless you have encountered it,
(20:46):
unless you've been exposed to it, you don't understand and
understandable sow what it really is involved and how everything
from being prepared, you know, having all the paperwork and
everything in place the way it needs to be, because
something as simple as somebody having Parkinson's it's very difficult
(21:08):
for them to sign a power of attorney. It's very
difficult for them to have a notary public approve their signature, right,
you know, So things like that you don't think of.
And until I encountered them with my dad and my sister,
with my sister, you know, and I having to encounter this,
nobody told me. And I was doing a show for
ten years about aging and being prepared, and I thought
(21:31):
I was preparing myself, and it was never really the same. Right.
But but part of the big part of that is
also and it stems from financial realities, but it also
stems from housing options.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yea.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
A big part of that is when you're caring for
somebody like that, whether it's temporarily, they could be basically
coming out of you know, a pretty severe cancer surgery
for example, you know, breast cancer, whatever the environment in
which you are, because most medical situations now will discharge
you as fast as they can discharge you, and they
do and they do, right, So where do you go?
(22:08):
You're going to go to a treatment facility until you
get released to home. You go home. Is the home
conducive to the way that you need to recover, whether
temporarily or more extended time, you know it's most likely
is not unless you have proactively set it up that way,
(22:30):
like when we PI we when we built a house
for our parent for my parents when my father retired,
we consciously designed a guest bedroom downstairs. We consciously made
sure that that bedroom had a shower and not a tub.
We consciously made sure that everything was zero threshold flow
on hard surfaces. We have car eric rugs down, but
(22:53):
they could be removed. We had a wide enough area
in the stairwell to allow for a potential either exposed
elevation or maybe a stacking of closets so that we
could put in an elevator in a closet. That some
of the stuff was built into the house so that
it would provide maximum and dependent living for someone should
their conditions change. But in most cases, the inventory that's
(23:17):
out there, including some of the stuff that's newly being
released on the market, by the way, but maybe to
a lesser degree, is not conducive for that. No, it
does not allow for that independent dignity living as conditions change,
and it seems there's two things.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
It's either functional or it's just ugly. I stayed in
a hotel a couple of nights ago in an accessible room, and.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
It was so offensive.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And I felt sorry for someone who had to be
in that room, who actually needed those grab bars. And
the way that the bathroom was set up and the
way the room was set up, it was just so
offensive that would just wasn't very nice. Who would want
to go there and stay in that room.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
So here's what's the interesting reality of that right now.
Prior to kind of I think, I guess ever since
I was in business school. I have an undergrad in
economics and Masters of Marketing and did this you know,
design as sort of a follow up degree that happened
to fall into. Originally was supposed to civil engineered, so
I was familiar with the construction side of things. I'd
(24:31):
grown up on job sites with my father, but I
had not really pursued that first. And then I found
myself in this space of design. And I remember even
as early as when the uh, you know, a DA
regulations became became a factor of live, you know, the
American Disabilities Act. So the eighty eight, with the ADA
you know rules coming into play, we ended up with
(24:57):
having to now adhere to that in a commercial right. Well, again,
I was doing design school, but I was kind of
leaning towards being involved in sort of hospitality or hotel work. Right,
So if you're looking at five star hotel work, even
as early as those days, in order to meet the requirements,
the federal requirements for the ADA compliancy, those hotels were
(25:20):
not going to charge less for those rooms on new projects.
They needed to basically be addressed in a manner that
was not going to take away from the quality of offering. Right.
And if you've been to a say, a three star
hotel extended stay, and you've gone to into those rooms,
now they're even better than they were before. But if
you go to a five star property or resort property
(25:42):
and you happen to be in an ADA room, it
doesn't look eighty A. In fact, the words disability don't
necessarily apply because you're still charging that higher rate for
the room. Every now, right, the application of those meeting
those requirements to allow for independent uh maneuverability and experience,
(26:08):
you know, positive mobility, right, use those solutions had to
be not only aesthetic and functional, but they also had
to be positiveree experiential.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Right. So there's another there's another label that really applies
better when you start applying the guidelines beyond just the
minimums of the eighty eight, when you start looking at
it as being a design philosophy. There's a term that
is a little bit more inclusive called universal design.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yes, we talk universal design. Yes.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
With universal design means equal accessibility, mobility, experience yes, and
in usability, engagement with the space regardless exactly, age, physical, mobility, whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
It is right and pleasing and still esthetically pleasing.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Not only aesthetically pleasing. And I think that's where like
design sometimes gets limited regarded in a limited.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Manner it does.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
It's not just esthetically pleasing, it's experientially immersive and engaging.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Right. So for example, you have you have a sphere
that has water running on it. If you're incorporating that
into a sensory garden, no matter whether a person is
in a wheelchair or standing up, or is an older
parent with grandkids, or you know a family of four,
they're they're all going to be able to experience this.
(27:42):
If you place that sphere with the TecTile water element
at a height that is universally usable, accessible by everybody.
If you put it too high, you've eliminated some of
the people. If you put it too low, you've eliminated
some of the people, right because they you know, we
talk about people's flexibility and mobility, right, so verstal design
actually is a better term to use as a direction
(28:07):
for wanting to achieve more than the bare minimum. Yes,
unfortunately for the longest time. And that applies to what
we refer to as aging in place too. In my mind,
aging in place as a term is limiting. Similar to
when you say ada, I think if you say if
(28:27):
you say universal design, lifetime homes or or home you know,
forever homes, if you will whatever that you want, the
term you want to use, then it opens up the
conversation to not what is the least we can do,
but what is the most that we can do that's
(28:48):
cost effective, appropriate for the budget, but maximize the quality
of life?
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yes, so and myself for example, back to my mom.
There's a community in Huntington Beach, the fifty five plus community.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I've seen these before.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
There are fifty five plus communities all that means is
that they don't have children, and it's gated and all
these other things. But the architectural layout of the home.
She can't get a wheelchair in the shower. She can't
get or even a walker a walker into the bathroom,
and the shower handle is way up high.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
And microwaves are still above the.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Microwaves, so we have to put a microwave on the counter,
all kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
The corridors are not white enough, are not white enough.
So act I'm not going to name names, but that
actually is still the problem, and some of the stuff
that's currently coming on the market as new builds.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Believe it or not, Yes, it is, it is. It is.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We're building a house. We're building a house. We'll move
in in the next couple of weeks. I can't reach
the fan over the stove. And they said, well, there's
a little app you can use. I said, I don't
want to use the app in the kitchen to turn
on my fan, right, yeah, well, but that's the rule
because you have to have it this high over the
gas stove and over this and okay, oh that's fine,
(30:12):
but you know, we made something yet.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yet Yet if you put the fan actually in the
in a sofett above the kitchen rather than only be
above the stove, If you actually provided another fan above
the kitchen, and you put the switch on a wall
that's accessible like a regular switch, then you basically have
solved that problem. And what did it really cost to
(30:33):
do that?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Nothing, But you know, I didn't know about it until
it was already in.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And that's another subject.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
But we just want to interrupt a second and say,
if someone's just listening to us, just joining us, that
you have joined us on Always Ageless and here on
camm E T fourteen ninety am radio, and you're listening
to our discussion about housing and creating the best living
environment for you and your aging appearance and your blended family.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
You can email your questions for.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Rod or I at Ageless valeriad Always ageless dot com,
Valeridalways ageless dot com. We do answer all of your emails.
I would be glad to answer your questions during this discussion.
So let's talk about ad us because you're pretty good
at that, and those, just for the benefit of our audience,
those are auxiliary dwelling units. So it used to be
(31:23):
they were called granny flats, but then because the State
of California said we need more housing, they changed them
to auxiliary dwelling units, and they change the guidelines. So
used to be in order to have a granny flat
you had to have a really large lot. It was
at one time a minimum of ten thousand square feet,
and that extra unit that you built on your property
(31:45):
had to have setback so much space between the unit
and the fence on all three sides. Now, because we're
trying to increase the number of housing units in the
state of California, you can have an auxiliary dwelling unit
in your backyard and I think it's even as narrow
as five or six feet from the lot line. So
(32:05):
more people are building more auxiliary dwelling units. This is
great because you can have another family member live with you.
As a matter of fact, we have someone we've interviewed
recently where the younger group in the family bought that house.
They're living in the adu, their older family members are
in the single story house in the front and when
(32:25):
they're gone, then the kids will move into the bigger house.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So that's that's a really good thing.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
And actually I don't know your personal opinion, although I
think I do. I personally think it is one of
the least or the most underutilized property opportunities right now.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I think people are not using it enough.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I will think you well, I will say by the way,
I love I love how you said pose the question
that said your opinion. It reminds me of Jim Mclair. Basically,
it's like, you know, go like when he was basically
puts the person and then it would basically launch like
the person. Okay, now you weigh in on the stuff
that that was really very good for those who are
basically old journalism and talk show fans. But I will
(33:11):
tell you about ADUs. ADUs is at risk in my
opinion because when they did it, that was the idea.
It was a granny flat, right, but very quickly because
the city is then also expedited it. If you're going
to do an ADU, the city would fast track it.
(33:33):
And I think that was because they realized that there's
not enough housing for seniors and in most cases housing
for seniors. Just so we can paint a picture here,
assisted living, independent living, all that stuff, there really isn't
an insurance that covers it. So you would actually have
to be paying from family assets to house a loved
(33:54):
one in some sort of senior sensitive environment. So that
means that you're pleading from family assets in the course
of doing that. Plus it's not cheap. Plus it then
doesn't really necessarily include the medical that's another layer of cost.
So there was a time when you could apply as
(34:14):
a family member to be recognized and as an actual
caregiver and basically get a stipend from the state to
basically provide that service to a loved one in the home.
Goes back to where do you provide that service? What
is the environment that's conducive to do that. So ADUs
came about and they were you know, like seven hundred
fifty square feet single story, you know, put in the backyard,
(34:38):
and a lot of cities embraced that because I believe,
whether it was mentioned or not, that there was a
way for that city to seem to be responsible to
this aging population by providing that as a solution instead
of forcing developers to build more senior housing. And to
your point, it also then provided the ability to provide
(35:00):
that family support structure within the footprint of one property. Yes,
what happened because what happened and is happening because of
the fast tracking and now because it has now overlapped
the lack of housing in general in the state of
California is what was basically a solution for senior housing
(35:22):
and maybe reintegration of family support structures, and a happenstance
of that that wasn't intentional is because the market pricing
is so high. You now had family members that were younger,
that were starting families that were now able to actually
own or live in the environment in which they were
born and raised in their backyard of their parents, or
(35:44):
in some cases they would be the ones in the
main house and the parents would now basically be in
the auxiliary unit. And it brought families together into support capacity.
So that was actually a positive outgrowth of that, but
it became multiple units on the same footprint with a
higher density in order to meet now also this other aspect,
(36:05):
which is housing yes shortage. I think we now have
negative pushback because there's some communities now that are re
evaluating their ADU policies. There's some communities that saying, well,
you took out all the car ports in the apartments
and turned them into ADUs and now there's parking issues. Right,
So it starts, it starts to kind of fall, start
(36:27):
to folter now into this this zone which unfortunately we
you know, we we seem to be we're talking about
it all the time. Now all of a sudden, we're
not talking about it, which which is, uh, what do
you call it? What do they call them? Like group homes? Right?
Because I remember when the group homes conversation was happening
and everybody was against it because it was being utilized
as a category in order to establish recovery businesses and
(36:50):
neighborhoods that where the neighbors felt it was inappropriate, right.
And I would caution people that were just screaming about
being against group homes that when you basically talking about
being anti group homes, you're also eliminating the possibility for
things like six you know, six what is it six
beds or less than you know, bored and care that
(37:14):
those are also under decadegory group homes. Right. So the
language we use, whether it's ADA, Universal Design, Aging in Place,
forever homes, ADU, high density affordable housing, workforce housing, cost,
market cost housing, the terminology that we use in conversing
(37:35):
about these issues that are very important and timely issues
in our society is super critical and if we're lazy
in the language that we use as it being what
is just the normal clature, now this is what we
call it. We in our positions of being basically public facing,
have an opportunity to educate that the questions and the
(37:57):
solutions are a lot more nuanced and complex, but they're
also very encouraging and empowering if we embrace them that way.
So how do we go about dealing with the ADU
situation where we also don't sacrifice this ground gained for
quality of life ageless housing?
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yes, and and then but then the other issue that
we have, which we see in new build a lot
is multi gen housing where the homes are designed to
have an older family member living there, hopefully on the
lower level, hopefully with the larger bathroom that they can
get in and out of, and those kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
So not necessarily though, because some of the next gen
housing that I've seen still doesn't do that. And and
in fact, when it first they first started putting out
next gen housing, the next gen primary sensitivity was to
energy conservation and sustainability. Wasn't this other layer. And I
(39:03):
don't know whether it's because the subject of somebody getting
older is so uncomfortable for people to talk to talk
to each other about that it doesn't come up. But again,
it's like everything else in life. If you proactively take
action in advance to drive and empower yourself towards an
outcome that you desire, you are more likely to achieve
(39:24):
it and feel good about it. Plus, there's a realistic
positive in terms of money and value, because if you
can get five or ten or fifteen or plus whatever
years out of your home that you now have modified
to meet your needs, going forward proactively doesn't mean you've
(39:45):
reduced the quality of life. You've actually added layers to
keep it enhanced and enriched and more sustainable. If you
do that, and especially a market like today, which is
basically somewhat flat right, you are able to not only
continue the quality of life in a familiar surrounding of
your neighborhood, your neighbors, your support system, knowing everything, all
(40:08):
the services are near you, when the rest of the
real estate market is saying you got to scale down,
move somewhere else, and you're basically going to give away
some of the quality of life that has appreciated your
home and your neighborhood over the years you've been in
there by moving away from that, but if you actually
figure out a way to stay in that home and
be able to hold off the sell or the transition
(40:28):
five to ten, fifteen years, you're now in more of
a of a driving seat driver's seat of when you
sell and what the market value is at that time.
And you've also gained the ability to continue and maintain
a quality of life that you want on your terms longer.
So it's not just a it's not just it's not
(40:50):
an aesthetic solution only. It is not a just a
a you know, a freedom of mobility solution only it
has direct impact on your portfolio and the family assets.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Well.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
And there's a lot of value to building your home,
especially as our population ages and the number of people
in our population who are older increases, Homes that have
opportunities are going.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
To be more desirable and there's a little bit more
centory are of them, so you basically can garner a
better selling price.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Single story homes.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You're a start cookie, my friend. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Exactly right.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Single story homes are so hard to find and homes
with downstairs bedrooms the same thing. They're very difficult to find, yep,
but they're not impossible. The good thing is things like
elevators are much easier to install in homes than they
ever were. That's always an opportunity. But that's another subject
for another day.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
But you also need you also, I mean, when you
start looking at these solutions to add into an environment,
I think the important thing also to emphasize is that
you can do it piecemeal, product by product, or you
can actually plan for it in such a way that
it simply as putting in like I'm doing a let's
say we're doing a bathroom remodel because the kids moved out,
and I'm remodeling the bathrooms or whatever. Twenty cents worth
(42:12):
of plywood in the right location, at the right height
in the behind the tile that's expensive that you waited
three months to get from Italy. Okay, it's going to
make it a lot easier for you to install a
grab bar, one that's maybe esthetically to your liking, or
maybe even one that's hidden in the wall like the
color has some of those, and basically account for all
of that in advance so that you don't basically have
(42:36):
to go and basically rip out that tile or risk
the thing not holding or whatever later. So I think
even when you are looking at solutions to incorporate, it's
important to note and be reminded that you have the
ability to approach it from a holistic perspective of an
overall effect of what you want your overall quality of
(42:57):
life to be in that environment. You don't have to
settle for you know, here's the section cup things that
are from Walmart, and here's the you know, not knocking Molmart,
but you know, like you're getting sometf from Amazon. You're
drilling the wall and putting it on the weekend. Great,
But I think having a master plan for how you're
going to retrofit the whole house. Are you gonna are
(43:19):
you going to put in a a sauna or a steam?
Are you going to do in a wellness layer in
the house that basically allows you to maintain your health
mental state during the court, Like, there's other layers to
this that are health and wellness that we all could
benefit from, whether we are having difficulty mobility wise or
(43:42):
we are in a wheelchair temporarily or otherwise. I mean,
you got people that are that are older people active adults.
I would say that are weekend warriors. They bicycle, they
you know, they have they have they have knee surgeries,
they have hip replacements, they have things that that nature. Right.
So if you basically have a house that you're doing
(44:03):
remodeling to because it was time, it's been time. You
want to remodel the kitchen, run in the bathroom, change
the rooms, open up cortors. If you already build all
that in there, no matter what life throws at you,
you're to be able to navigate it.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Right and to stay there and make it more pleasant.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Because when you're impacted like that, you're already taking a
hit on your psychological state of mind. You're being read
from a hospital or whatever. Right, the last thing I
think you would want to do is go to that
sanctuary and home environment that you are you are looking
to hold you okay, and end up basically where you're
(44:44):
where you're where you're now additionally impacted because your home
has been ripped apart, so your sanctuary is not pristine
when you need it the most. In order to provide
for you an environment of healing.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
If money was no object, what are some of the
changes that you would suggest that people make And are
you saying by just listening to you, are you saying that,
rather than make small changes at a time, that people
should do a grander remodel.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
I don't say that. I'm not saying that they have
to do a grander remodel. I'm saying that, and I
advise this to all my clients. Even though your rollout
and implementation may be in phases, it is really good
to have a master plan of where you want to end. Okay,
all right, because you can still phase it, you can
still stagger it, you can still do it in a
(45:37):
manner that makes sense. What goes what comes first, and
what's more priority and what's more important. Right. But I
think if you have a master plan and that goes
actually for people that have enough room to put in
an ADU, that goes out also to the outside environment,
the outside backyard, right engagement, especially in places like California
(45:58):
or we have the ability to you know, you appreciate
the weather for a majority of the year, Like that's
part of that step outside being nature, be around your roses, whatever, like,
you know, how how do you engage people in their
outside as well as they inside indoor outdoor living. I
think some of the things that I would say is,
(46:19):
in most cases, most people look at their kitchens, look
at their bathrooms, right, and they sit because that's sort
of it's sort of an understandable renovation project for an
existent home. Right.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
People understand that, right.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
But when you're doing that, are you accounting, for example,
that you may have multi generations in your household, whether
on holidays only or other times. Are you going to want,
for example, is it important for you that grandma basically
is able to share the recipes for the stuff that
she may have done with your grandkids or with her
grandkids around an environment in the kitchen where now it's
(46:58):
a social gathering space, or is am I going to
be sitting in the other room or in a wheelchair
feeling isolated from the experience. Like, there's things like that
that are almost bespoke, customizable to every family and how
they basically live and what their aspirations are in passing
on legacy and traditions. So I think bathrooms and kitchens
(47:20):
is one of the things bathrooms, depending on what it is,
I agree with you on hundred percent. The first thing
that anybody should do is figure out a way to
basically maybe niche out or add on a sleeping area
that maybe could be multifunctional in anticipation for maybe needing
to care for a parent, or maybe if somebody gets
(47:41):
injured temporarily and needs to be you know, bed needs
to be rolled in there. If you could doublop as
an office could double up as a gym. Is fitness
and health and important factor for people's lives, in which case,
how can we incorporate some of those features like steams
on and maybe in that bathroom remodel that you're doing,
we do we do we provide a a sauna and
(48:03):
a workout area in the gym or gym area in
one of the garages. Do we bring that into a home,
because then you are able to maintain your fitness regiment
more so than every time we got to get a
car and go to the gym necessarily. Plus there's a
cost saving in a way. But there's also things as
simple as if you're redoing the front yard or redoing
(48:24):
some landscaping. Uh, a lot of people may want to
do you know, step ups or land you know kind
of things, but you could easily do like a very
leisurely ramp that basically leads to the front door and
hide it even within the landscaping. And I gotta tell you,
if you know, regardless, if you know, if you're at
an airport, for example, and there's a ramp, you use
(48:47):
the ramp like ramp is kind of an interesting thing,
right stairs. It's not that you don't, we won't. You
won't take the stairs, but there's other ways to basically
infuse some of this stuff. So if you can incur
cost or add money and improvements to your house, you
should definitely be considering for yourself, for loved ones to
(49:08):
your point, for potential resale to an aging population that
is well healed and has the resources, what would be
some of the things you should incorporate into your design.
Because if the incremental additional cost, if there is one,
actually is minimal, the feak that the value is in
(49:31):
having the right people on board that are guiding you,
willing to have these conversations with you, willing to basically
ask these questions that are not necessarily that may seem
a little intrusive, but in a very respectful way, and
then basically designing and planning the project to account for
all these things that you may want to now add
on as incremental benefits, the cost tends to be minuscul
(49:54):
You're still going to use herd surfaces, you're still going
to build that kitchen counter, You're still going to basically
do innovation on the corridors. You may replace your doors,
So do you widen your doors now and just put
in a thirty six inch door if you can versus
twenty four Not necessarily everywhere if it's in existent house,
but wherever you can, do you take out little column
separations in the hallways that allow for four foot you know,
(50:16):
circulation or at the very least three foot clearances between things.
You know. It's just applying some of that Universal Design
and EIGHTA guidelines that we use in commercial because every
hotel that anybody's gone to, every restaurant that everybody's gone
to since ninety eight whatever it was ninety seven I
think was the eighty eight came in. Okay, every one
(50:36):
of those has factored in those requirements to some degree
or the other because they were forced to Residential real
estate residential construction development does not have that requirement. But
I have argued for the last at least decade that
any smart contractor any smart home builder that is basically
(50:58):
looking to appeal to a group of people that are
usually not addressed, their needs are not addressed, and in
doing so provide a product that not only meets the
needs of everybody else, but also meets the needs of
this group of people which tend to be in a
position most cases, especially in places like California, like southern California,
(51:19):
Orange County, where it's an affluent base. I mean, somebody
may actually have somebody who is a child that for
life has actually been you know, a paraplegic or had
an accident in a high school or a surfing accident,
and now for the next god knows how many years
long the life that they may have, they are now
facing these difficulties. It's not just an aging situation. It's
(51:41):
a universal solution that benefits everybody.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
It is. It is.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Unfortunately we are out of time. We loved chatting with you, Dan.
I hope that you'll come back.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
Oh, I would love to come back anytime.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
I'm glad that we had some time to talk about
your trip to Africa and your mid life transformation.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
So if I may value I just want to tell
people if you're interested in finding out more about that
midlife transformation thing and sort of the pivot. Go to
the rad life t H E r A A D
l I f E dot com right the whole thing
in the URL and check it out. There's a magazine there,
there's articles there, there's a link to the podcast that's
(52:22):
been going on for ten years with new episodes there,
and some recommendations of stuff that I actually used. It's
not really influencer stuff, it's stuff that I use to
basically enhance my life at this point. And there's a
whole bunch of reading books too that I love to read.
So I've shared a lot of book titles that I've
read and let me know what you guys think. Reach
out to me and Valerie. Yeah, absolutely, I will take
(52:44):
you up on an invitation anytime.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
We'd love to have you.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
So.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
One thing I loved about today's conversations that it reminds
us of design isn't just about how a space looks,
but how it lives and how we can live in
that space. So, whether it's an ADU for a parent,
a multi gen home keeps a family coast, or simply
updating a bathroom or kitchen for.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Safety and dignity.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
The spaces we create shape the way that we age,
connect and thrive. Rad you've shown us, Rod, You've shown
us that the design can be a form of freedom
and might inspire you to jump off cliff into a waterfall,
and it can support independence, nurture wellness, and give families
the tools to face the transitions with confidence instead of
(53:27):
fear and instead of uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
So thank you Rod very much for sharing.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
So until next time, remember to come back again next
week for another episode of Always Ageless. Remember age is
just a number, but how you design your life and
your space that is always ageless.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Thank you Rod for being with us today.
Your home is not just four walls. It's a living, beautiful,
breathing space that supports your health, your family, your life,
and even your future. What if the right design could
even ease the stress of caregiving. It could bring generations
closer together and allow aging adults to live with both dignity, safety,
(00:48):
comfort and independence. Well, today, I'm always ageless. We're diving
into a conversation that affects almost every family. How do
we create homes that truly work for us as we age?
My guess Rod Gantune has no stranger to this challenge,
that's for sure. He's a global hospitality and wellness designer
(01:10):
who has spent more than thirty years shaping experiences in hotels,
spas and communities around the world. But he's also turned
his creative eye towards some real issues that families face
every day, with things like ADUs, which is our auxiliary
dwelling units, generational living, multi generational living, and aging in place.
(01:35):
Knowing that scenery around you actually changes how you feel
in your home.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
And we learned something else.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Rod recently had a visit in Africa that actually changes life,
and we're actually going to have him talk about that.
Also So whether you're considering building an ADU for your
mom or dad, you're rethinking your own future home, or
you're just curious about how design impacts your life, this
conversation is going to inspire you to see your space
(02:02):
in a whole new way, and not with just buy it.
You don't have to be an expensive designer or hire
one either.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Rod.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
As you know, we've looked forward to having you on
our show for a very long time. We are so
glad we waited while you traveled around the world so
you can come back and be on always a just
welcome today to be on our show.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Thank you, Valerie. It's really a pleasure. Yes, we have
definitely been working on trying to make this happen for
a bit.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We have. We have given your history and your background.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Tell us a little bit about how it brought you
to caring about housing for aging adults and their families,
and you know, actually, let's don't do that.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Let's go first to your recent trip.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
I may have told you ever since I was a
little girl, my dream has gone in African Safari. When
you said you were going to Africa, I just was
so excited. I felt like I was going with you,
but I know that you talked about how that actually
was life changing. Yeah, and I know that you have
a show called The Red Life, which is focused also
on experiences that people have in their older years, just
(03:07):
like we do. Hear it always ageless. So let's talk
about your trip to Africa. What did that really mean
to you? What was it, what you hoped it would be.
What can our listeners.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Hear from you about that experience.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
It's a really good few questions and it's definitely makes
me think. I mean, going to Africa, the exotic nature
of the trip, the you know, the safari, the animals,
all that stuff is in itself pretty grand, right, And
to do it where you are maybe a transformational point
(03:42):
in your life or like you're you're wondering what's next,
so to speak. Right, I had just turned sixty in January,
and so to me and I don't feel quote unquote
whatever supposed sixty is supposed to feel like. But you know, right,
I mean, it's such a stupid thing with numbers. But
there was a layer to the experience of going to
(04:03):
Africa or doing that kind of excursion that also was
a little bit maybe deeper, like it was, it was
when I said, and I said to you, when you
asked me, I said, this was life changing. I think
it was life changing in that it was expansive first
and foremost. I think sometimes we get we feel we
(04:25):
forget that there's a whole world out there. There's a
whole world of experiences out there, and we are sort
of in our lane and we're so focused and we're
just like in this little microcosm of you know, where
we can thrive and we can, we can succeed, and
we can we can you know, keep our keep our cell,
(04:45):
you know, swim well for professionally or personally or whatever.
But there's a whole world out there, and sometimes it
actually helps expand the soul, expand the thinking. Even you
could even argue kind of like keep you more youthful
and curious honestly, right, Yeah, by actually just stepping outside
that comfort zone, stepping outside that that you know, four
(05:10):
defining parameters or boundaries, physical boundaries, whether it's county, whether
it's state, whether it's just your home. So Africa was
a very interesting experience. I was there for almost two weeks.
I then extended for another three or four days because
I wanted to interview a couple of people there. Again,
having been doing the rad Live show for about ten years,
(05:32):
I was now on the road and I wanted to
interview some interesting characters there. Even though our focus has
now been elevated after ten years of interviewing anybody that
we liked are curious about, I think that's still an
underlying current. It's like whatever I'm interested in as I
get older. When we first started, the focus was on
(05:54):
like say, baby boomers and issues that were aging related.
But then we we that very easily became an age
exploration of things that as I got older was interesting
to me. People I encountered the experiences and I would
bring them to share. So this was kind of in
that same line. And it was with the gentleman who
(06:14):
basically had the put you know, the company together for
the Safarias and was being very successful and his background
was interesting, so I interviewed him. I also, for those
who know, I will occasionally, you know, partake and enjoy
a good cigar. So I found a manufacturer of cigars
in Zimbabwe. These two gentlemen were in Zimbabwe, made from
(06:37):
Zimbabwe and tobacco. Who knew that there was such a
thing as tobacco in Zimbabwe that was grown. I thought
everything was in North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And how was it.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Let's just say that it was satisfactory while I was there.
And the joke actually was with the gentleman who had
the factory, who, by the way, in another story of reinvention,
reinvented himself like five years ago when he decided he
was going to do a cigar company. Up till that point,
he had never smoked a cigar and had were working
(07:06):
for Delta out of Atlanta. And so he went. He
went to Cuba, he went to Nicaraguay, he saw how
those factories were set up. He brought somebody who would
help him, and they set up a little factory in Zimbabwe,
in the capital of Harari. And so when I when
I first sampled his cigars, I was not in Harari,
but I happened to be sitting at a dinner table
(07:27):
at a restaurant with the gentleman who runs the Safari Company,
and the gentleman Safari Company, when I told him, Hey,
I just found these cigars. It's interesting. I don't even
know are they made here? What's the deal? He goes, Oh,
I know the guy who owns the company, and he
connected me with him at one WhatsApp right there at
the dinner table, and so I jokingly said to the guy,
I said, you know, I have a bone to pick
(07:49):
with you. Your cigars are dry, I said, But I
said I but I said, I need to come to
your factory and basically complain in person. That was my
sort of introduction to it. But the reason, I mean,
to be fair to his product. It was just not
in a humid or in the gift shop there where
I found it at the restaurant, so it but yeah,
I mean that was sort of another experience, and it
was you know, when I say life changing, Africa was
(08:11):
life changing. It wasn't life changing in that I had
never experienced this kind of serendipity or alignment of things.
But when you're younger, I think you do it almost subconsciously.
You don't have a clarity or an intentionality like this
is sort of the thing that resonates with you. This,
(08:34):
this this rhythm is actually an alignment with who you are.
You just happen to do what you're doing. You haven't
sat still long enough to really understand that this is
part of your credo. So when I went to Africa.
I was already kind of along those lines, and when
it was happening and unfolding with me, whether it was
from you know, this gentleman that that was doing the
(08:57):
far is who then basically happens to know this guy
with thear company. And then when I went to the
meet with the guy with a cigar company, I was
flying through Johannesburg and he said, oh, would you want
to have you know that one day or three cours
of the day that you were there, would you like
to have somebody show you around joe Burg? And I
said sure, And in the course of doing that, I
then basically ended up going to the Nelson Mandela House
(09:19):
and seeing the museum in Soweto and seeing the dualities
and the parallels that they're like from from extreme one
extreme to the other in South Africa and Johannesburg itself,
just in terms of from one neighborhood to another neighborhood right,
and how people are living there. And then we happened
(09:40):
to sit at a coffee shop waiting till my flight.
You know, we have to have to kick me to
the airport, and he said, well, let me introduce you
to this friend of mine who basically happens to live
down the street. Maybe he'll come and have a beer
with us or something. I said, sure, So he comes over,
and this guy basically starts talking about how in his
thirties he actually did he quit his job, sold everything
(10:00):
was in an agency in Germany, and basically got on
a motorcycle because he had just done a motorcycle trip
with his best friend and it had it had a
timeline like when it started when it finished, and he
felt like that was too short, so he wanted to
get on another motorcycle ride and not have an end
date in mind, and ended and ended up taking motorcycle
(10:24):
ride across Europe, through Asia, down to Australia, over to
Africa and back up to Germany and it ended when
it ended, and how that was very life changing, and
how he perceives and interacts with life after he did
that trip. And here I was basically encountering these people
that were again reminding me about reinvention, whether it was
(10:48):
a reinvention in terms of their career choice or reinvention
by coming back to their country and basically, you know,
putting out not only an enterprise but one that had
a social consciousness that actually helped people. And then here's
this guy who now basically is stationed in South Africa,
who had gone back to Germany, worked whatever, and now
he's writing a history book and consulting from overseas. So
(11:12):
life changing in that it reminded me just how expansive
the world is and how limitless our options really are,
and that we are the ones who get to decide
what is the life that we want to design on
our own terms. At any point in our life, we're
faced with adversity, we're faced with loss, we're faced with challenges,
(11:35):
but we always remain You know, one of my favorite
mantras right now, and it's actually sitting on the new
magazine that we just launched for this issue, is freedom. Always.
You always have freedom to decide how to design your
life on your own terms. It doesn't mean that, you know,
it's an excuse for selfishness or an excuse for basically
(11:58):
hurting people in the process, but it's a very wide
space in which you take and you give your actually
you give your permission to actually design your life on
your own terms and not be coming at it from
a place of scarcity or fear, but actually from a
place of abundance and positive potential. And that's the that's
(12:23):
sort of the the when I say it was life changing.
And then I kind of like, you know, rubber stamped
it and kind of like just sealed it with with
a with an action at the end. Because unbeknownst to
anybody who was on my on the trip with me,
I extended those four days and one thing in my
mind was maybe I'll bungee jump off the Victoria Falls Bridge. Now,
(12:44):
for those who don't know, the Victoria Falls Bridge symbolically
also bridges one country to another, so imagine the symbolism.
You're in one spot and this bridge actually bridges like
Zimbabwe for from I'm gonna get it wrong. I mean
it's Zambia, I think it is, but it's like it
bridges that and it sits over one of the three
(13:06):
largest waterfalls in the world. Niagara is the other one,
and I forget where the third one is, but three waterfalls.
This is one of the three largest waterfalls in the
world and it is a on ESCO Cultural Site. And
I decided I was going to bungee jump off this bridge.
And when you bungee jump, For anybody who knows about
bungee jumping. You don't just walk up to the edge
(13:28):
and just kind of drop. You actually walk up to
the edge, and you got to propel yourself. You gotta
propel yourself off the bridge. Otherwise you may hit yourself
against the bridge. So you're consciously projecting yourself into the abyss,
if you will, right. And I did it because I
wanted to have a reference point physically, mentally, body memory,
(13:52):
emotionally tell us about that never done that before, never
done anything like that before. The colost thing is why
maybe I tend them want you know, uh, jumped out
of a plane, you know, skydive or a friend of
mine's birthday where a whole bunch of us when and
I was tethered to this guy. So I did that
because I had realized over the last say half a
(14:16):
year that we have an interesting relationship with uncertainty of
not knowing what the outcome is going to be, right,
but still taking the journey. Yes, And that uncertainty relationship
we have usually as adults is in direct contrast contrast
(14:36):
with this uncertainty relationship we have, or the relationship we
have with uncertainty and not knowing when we're children when
we're children, you wake up in the morning and you
don't know what the day is going to bring. Necessarily
you have the confines and protection of the family, whatever,
but you don't know what the day is going to bring,
and you you actually have a bit of excitement enjoy
(15:00):
about not knowing what the day is going to bring.
So when it happens, you're like, well, that was interesting
or wow, that was really great, Like there's a there's
a little wonder that happens, right, and a little little
little positive and darkness that happens out of the So
we don't embrace uncertainty as a thing to be worried about,
(15:22):
to feel anxious about, to be afraid of. We we
look at it as being possibility a little bit that
we don't know what that is and the and what happens.
When we get older and we take on like sort
of responsibilities and roles and what have you, we start
basically divining uncertainty as being something to be worried about,
(15:42):
something to put contingency plans against, things to basically work
towards trying to mitigate. The more less uncertain and ambiguous
something is, the more likely it will not disrupt our lives.
But when we do that, we do that at the
cost of losing that wonder that we had when our children.
(16:04):
And what I realized is, it's not that we no
longer have that muscle. It's that muscle of embracing uncertainty
with a certain positivity, not reckless, but still positive positivity.
That muscle still exists. It's just that it's a little
atrophied because we haven't used it for the better part
of the last say forty years. Right. And so when
(16:27):
when I realized that, and I wanted to change the
narrative on the fact that uncertainty is only grounds for
worrying and and fear. I wanted to have a benchmark
moment where I could refer to mind, body, memory, you know,
emotional soul, whatever, right you want to call it, that
(16:49):
manifest that was literally tangible. So jumping off the bridge
thirty nine stories of a drop, right three hundred and
ninety feet or so something like that was actually for
me something that now I can go back and refer
to if I face something during my day, my day
(17:10):
or whatever that seems overwhelming or whatever, by actually reminding
myself that, look, let's just be let's have a little
perspective here. You jumped off a bridge not knowing what
the outcome was going to be. You didn't take a
completely risk, you know, uncalculated risk, but you still did
that action. You still proceeded to follow through on something
(17:31):
that seemed like you didn't have one hundred percent control over.
So what you're facing right now, is it really the
big thing that you are making? Is it really the
thing that you are you know, either catastrophizing or your
mind just won't shut down and is constantly playing these
scenarios of negative thing. Is it really that? How does
(17:53):
it compare to you jumping off a bridge? Thirty nine stories?
You know, this is probably nothing compared to that. So
then it gives me an ability to reground and have perspective.
So again, how was the trip to Africa? It was
kind of life.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Changing, kind of life changing. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And while we're talking about Africa and people who can
do what they love, actually the world lost Jane Goodall today,
ninety one years old, and she lived a wonderful life
doing what she wanted to do, being in Africa with
the beautiful animals.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
And I grew up as a little girl, I wanted
to be a nurse in Africa.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
It's all I ever wanted to be and I never
made it there. Still haven't been in Africa, but that's
my dream vacation. So I'm working.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I'm working. I'm working on a Safari excursion under the
rad life. So sign me up, sign me up next
next year.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Certainly a lot of people before this current time went
and did amazing things, So let's talk back about housing
and design and how we can help our viewers and
our listeners be more comfortable and feel safe and secure
and more confident with their housing decisions right now. And
(19:06):
I really think that that is part of the issue,
is they just don't know what to do. And I
am convinced that many of us grew up not thinking
that we would be at this age caring for our
aging parents.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
We thought that, absolutely absolutely think of anything. Our parents
probably shielded us from when they did it for theirs,
which is well, except in.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
My case, I didn't have any grandparents after I was
eight years old, so I didn't I didn't go through that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Some kids did, but I didn't. I wasn't fortunate to
do that.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I mean, even even if you think about like ourselves, right,
if you have kids, you're not going to The ideal
scenario in your mind is you're not going to burden
them with something, right, So I think I think to
your point though, is people don't know. And part of
why they don't know is because in most cases maybe
either been spared that or maybe they have been not
(20:03):
physically around it, and it's not really part of life
until you experience it, Like like, you can't really explain
to somebody one hundred percent what it takes and what
the impacts are and how they ripple through your life
and your relationship. All this stuff when you are caring
for a parent who maybe has Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or
(20:25):
something like that. And I know people that are not
necessarily older that are dealing with that. There's some people
where they know their parents have early onset and so
they may be in their thirties and facing it. I
remember one time interviewing a gentleman on my show where
he was like in high school when his father basically
was going through this. So unless you have encountered it,
(20:46):
unless you've been exposed to it, you don't understand and
understandable sow what it really is involved and how everything
from being prepared, you know, having all the paperwork and
everything in place the way it needs to be, because
something as simple as somebody having Parkinson's it's very difficult
(21:08):
for them to sign a power of attorney. It's very
difficult for them to have a notary public approve their signature, right,
you know, So things like that you don't think of.
And until I encountered them with my dad and my sister,
with my sister, you know, and I having to encounter this,
nobody told me. And I was doing a show for
ten years about aging and being prepared, and I thought
(21:31):
I was preparing myself, and it was never really the same. Right.
But but part of the big part of that is
also and it stems from financial realities, but it also
stems from housing options.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yea.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
A big part of that is when you're caring for
somebody like that, whether it's temporarily, they could be basically
coming out of you know, a pretty severe cancer surgery
for example, you know, breast cancer, whatever the environment in
which you are, because most medical situations now will discharge
you as fast as they can discharge you, and they
do and they do, right, So where do you go?
(22:08):
You're going to go to a treatment facility until you
get released to home. You go home. Is the home
conducive to the way that you need to recover, whether
temporarily or more extended time, you know it's most likely
is not unless you have proactively set it up that way,
(22:30):
like when we PI we when we built a house
for our parent for my parents when my father retired,
we consciously designed a guest bedroom downstairs. We consciously made
sure that that bedroom had a shower and not a tub.
We consciously made sure that everything was zero threshold flow
on hard surfaces. We have car eric rugs down, but
(22:53):
they could be removed. We had a wide enough area
in the stairwell to allow for a potential either exposed
elevation or maybe a stacking of closets so that we
could put in an elevator in a closet. That some
of the stuff was built into the house so that
it would provide maximum and dependent living for someone should
their conditions change. But in most cases, the inventory that's
(23:17):
out there, including some of the stuff that's newly being
released on the market, by the way, but maybe to
a lesser degree, is not conducive for that. No, it
does not allow for that independent dignity living as conditions change,
and it seems there's two things.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
It's either functional or it's just ugly. I stayed in
a hotel a couple of nights ago in an accessible room, and.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
It was so offensive.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And I felt sorry for someone who had to be
in that room, who actually needed those grab bars. And
the way that the bathroom was set up and the
way the room was set up, it was just so
offensive that would just wasn't very nice. Who would want
to go there and stay in that room.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
So here's what's the interesting reality of that right now.
Prior to kind of I think, I guess ever since
I was in business school. I have an undergrad in
economics and Masters of Marketing and did this you know,
design as sort of a follow up degree that happened
to fall into. Originally was supposed to civil engineered, so
I was familiar with the construction side of things. I'd
(24:31):
grown up on job sites with my father, but I
had not really pursued that first. And then I found
myself in this space of design. And I remember even
as early as when the uh, you know, a DA
regulations became became a factor of live, you know, the
American Disabilities Act. So the eighty eight, with the ADA
you know rules coming into play, we ended up with
(24:57):
having to now adhere to that in a commercial right. Well, again,
I was doing design school, but I was kind of
leaning towards being involved in sort of hospitality or hotel work. Right,
So if you're looking at five star hotel work, even
as early as those days, in order to meet the requirements,
the federal requirements for the ADA compliancy, those hotels were
(25:20):
not going to charge less for those rooms on new projects.
They needed to basically be addressed in a manner that
was not going to take away from the quality of offering. Right.
And if you've been to a say, a three star
hotel extended stay, and you've gone to into those rooms,
now they're even better than they were before. But if
you go to a five star property or resort property
(25:42):
and you happen to be in an ADA room, it
doesn't look eighty A. In fact, the words disability don't
necessarily apply because you're still charging that higher rate for
the room. Every now, right, the application of those meeting
those requirements to allow for independent uh maneuverability and experience,
(26:08):
you know, positive mobility, right, use those solutions had to
be not only aesthetic and functional, but they also had
to be positiveree experiential.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Right. So there's another there's another label that really applies
better when you start applying the guidelines beyond just the
minimums of the eighty eight, when you start looking at
it as being a design philosophy. There's a term that
is a little bit more inclusive called universal design.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yes, we talk universal design. Yes.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
With universal design means equal accessibility, mobility, experience yes, and
in usability, engagement with the space regardless exactly, age, physical, mobility, whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
It is right and pleasing and still esthetically pleasing.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Not only aesthetically pleasing. And I think that's where like
design sometimes gets limited regarded in a limited.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Manner it does.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
It's not just esthetically pleasing, it's experientially immersive and engaging.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Right. So for example, you have you have a sphere
that has water running on it. If you're incorporating that
into a sensory garden, no matter whether a person is
in a wheelchair or standing up, or is an older
parent with grandkids, or you know a family of four,
they're they're all going to be able to experience this.
(27:42):
If you place that sphere with the TecTile water element
at a height that is universally usable, accessible by everybody.
If you put it too high, you've eliminated some of
the people. If you put it too low, you've eliminated
some of the people, right because they you know, we
talk about people's flexibility and mobility, right, so verstal design
actually is a better term to use as a direction
(28:07):
for wanting to achieve more than the bare minimum. Yes,
unfortunately for the longest time. And that applies to what
we refer to as aging in place too. In my mind,
aging in place as a term is limiting. Similar to
when you say ada, I think if you say if
(28:27):
you say universal design, lifetime homes or or home you know,
forever homes, if you will whatever that you want, the
term you want to use, then it opens up the
conversation to not what is the least we can do,
but what is the most that we can do that's
(28:48):
cost effective, appropriate for the budget, but maximize the quality
of life?
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yes, so and myself for example, back to my mom.
There's a community in Huntington Beach, the fifty five plus community.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I've seen these before.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
There are fifty five plus communities all that means is
that they don't have children, and it's gated and all
these other things. But the architectural layout of the home.
She can't get a wheelchair in the shower. She can't
get or even a walker a walker into the bathroom,
and the shower handle is way up high.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
And microwaves are still above the.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Microwaves, so we have to put a microwave on the counter,
all kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
The corridors are not white enough, are not white enough.
So act I'm not going to name names, but that
actually is still the problem, and some of the stuff
that's currently coming on the market as new builds.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Believe it or not, Yes, it is, it is. It is.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We're building a house. We're building a house. We'll move
in in the next couple of weeks. I can't reach
the fan over the stove. And they said, well, there's
a little app you can use. I said, I don't
want to use the app in the kitchen to turn
on my fan, right, yeah, well, but that's the rule
because you have to have it this high over the
gas stove and over this and okay, oh that's fine,
(30:12):
but you know, we made something yet.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yet Yet if you put the fan actually in the
in a sofett above the kitchen rather than only be
above the stove, If you actually provided another fan above
the kitchen, and you put the switch on a wall
that's accessible like a regular switch, then you basically have
solved that problem. And what did it really cost to
(30:33):
do that?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Nothing, But you know, I didn't know about it until
it was already in.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And that's another subject.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
But we just want to interrupt a second and say,
if someone's just listening to us, just joining us, that
you have joined us on Always Ageless and here on
camm E T fourteen ninety am radio, and you're listening
to our discussion about housing and creating the best living
environment for you and your aging appearance and your blended family.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
You can email your questions for.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Rod or I at Ageless valeriad Always ageless dot com,
Valeridalways ageless dot com. We do answer all of your emails.
I would be glad to answer your questions during this discussion.
So let's talk about ad us because you're pretty good
at that, and those, just for the benefit of our audience,
those are auxiliary dwelling units. So it used to be
(31:23):
they were called granny flats, but then because the State
of California said we need more housing, they changed them
to auxiliary dwelling units, and they change the guidelines. So
used to be in order to have a granny flat
you had to have a really large lot. It was
at one time a minimum of ten thousand square feet,
and that extra unit that you built on your property
(31:45):
had to have setback so much space between the unit
and the fence on all three sides. Now, because we're
trying to increase the number of housing units in the
state of California, you can have an auxiliary dwelling unit
in your backyard and I think it's even as narrow
as five or six feet from the lot line. So
(32:05):
more people are building more auxiliary dwelling units. This is
great because you can have another family member live with you.
As a matter of fact, we have someone we've interviewed
recently where the younger group in the family bought that house.
They're living in the adu, their older family members are
in the single story house in the front and when
(32:25):
they're gone, then the kids will move into the bigger house.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So that's that's a really good thing.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
And actually I don't know your personal opinion, although I
think I do. I personally think it is one of
the least or the most underutilized property opportunities right now.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I think people are not using it enough.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I will think you well, I will say by the way,
I love I love how you said pose the question
that said your opinion. It reminds me of Jim Mclair. Basically,
it's like, you know, go like when he was basically
puts the person and then it would basically launch like
the person. Okay, now you weigh in on the stuff
that that was really very good for those who are
basically old journalism and talk show fans. But I will
(33:11):
tell you about ADUs. ADUs is at risk in my
opinion because when they did it, that was the idea.
It was a granny flat, right, but very quickly because
the city is then also expedited it. If you're going
to do an ADU, the city would fast track it.
(33:33):
And I think that was because they realized that there's
not enough housing for seniors and in most cases housing
for seniors. Just so we can paint a picture here,
assisted living, independent living, all that stuff, there really isn't
an insurance that covers it. So you would actually have
to be paying from family assets to house a loved
(33:54):
one in some sort of senior sensitive environment. So that
means that you're pleading from family assets in the course
of doing that. Plus it's not cheap. Plus it then
doesn't really necessarily include the medical that's another layer of cost.
So there was a time when you could apply as
(34:14):
a family member to be recognized and as an actual
caregiver and basically get a stipend from the state to
basically provide that service to a loved one in the home.
Goes back to where do you provide that service? What
is the environment that's conducive to do that. So ADUs
came about and they were you know, like seven hundred
fifty square feet single story, you know, put in the backyard,
(34:38):
and a lot of cities embraced that because I believe,
whether it was mentioned or not, that there was a
way for that city to seem to be responsible to
this aging population by providing that as a solution instead
of forcing developers to build more senior housing. And to
your point, it also then provided the ability to provide
(35:00):
that family support structure within the footprint of one property. Yes,
what happened because what happened and is happening because of
the fast tracking and now because it has now overlapped
the lack of housing in general in the state of
California is what was basically a solution for senior housing
(35:22):
and maybe reintegration of family support structures, and a happenstance
of that that wasn't intentional is because the market pricing
is so high. You now had family members that were younger,
that were starting families that were now able to actually
own or live in the environment in which they were
born and raised in their backyard of their parents, or
(35:44):
in some cases they would be the ones in the
main house and the parents would now basically be in
the auxiliary unit. And it brought families together into support capacity.
So that was actually a positive outgrowth of that, but
it became multiple units on the same footprint with a
higher density in order to meet now also this other aspect,
(36:05):
which is housing yes shortage. I think we now have
negative pushback because there's some communities now that are re
evaluating their ADU policies. There's some communities that saying, well,
you took out all the car ports in the apartments
and turned them into ADUs and now there's parking issues. Right,
So it starts, it starts to kind of fall, start
(36:27):
to folter now into this this zone which unfortunately we
you know, we we seem to be we're talking about
it all the time. Now all of a sudden, we're
not talking about it, which which is, uh, what do
you call it? What do they call them? Like group homes? Right?
Because I remember when the group homes conversation was happening
and everybody was against it because it was being utilized
as a category in order to establish recovery businesses and
(36:50):
neighborhoods that where the neighbors felt it was inappropriate, right.
And I would caution people that were just screaming about
being against group homes that when you basically talking about
being anti group homes, you're also eliminating the possibility for
things like six you know, six what is it six
beds or less than you know, bored and care that
(37:14):
those are also under decadegory group homes. Right. So the
language we use, whether it's ADA, Universal Design, Aging in Place,
forever homes, ADU, high density affordable housing, workforce housing, cost,
market cost housing, the terminology that we use in conversing
(37:35):
about these issues that are very important and timely issues
in our society is super critical and if we're lazy
in the language that we use as it being what
is just the normal clature, now this is what we
call it. We in our positions of being basically public facing,
have an opportunity to educate that the questions and the
(37:57):
solutions are a lot more nuanced and complex, but they're
also very encouraging and empowering if we embrace them that way.
So how do we go about dealing with the ADU
situation where we also don't sacrifice this ground gained for
quality of life ageless housing?
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yes, and and then but then the other issue that
we have, which we see in new build a lot
is multi gen housing where the homes are designed to
have an older family member living there, hopefully on the
lower level, hopefully with the larger bathroom that they can
get in and out of, and those kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
So not necessarily though, because some of the next gen
housing that I've seen still doesn't do that. And and
in fact, when it first they first started putting out
next gen housing, the next gen primary sensitivity was to
energy conservation and sustainability. Wasn't this other layer. And I
(39:03):
don't know whether it's because the subject of somebody getting
older is so uncomfortable for people to talk to talk
to each other about that it doesn't come up. But again,
it's like everything else in life. If you proactively take
action in advance to drive and empower yourself towards an
outcome that you desire, you are more likely to achieve
(39:24):
it and feel good about it. Plus, there's a realistic
positive in terms of money and value, because if you
can get five or ten or fifteen or plus whatever
years out of your home that you now have modified
to meet your needs, going forward proactively doesn't mean you've
(39:45):
reduced the quality of life. You've actually added layers to
keep it enhanced and enriched and more sustainable. If you
do that, and especially a market like today, which is
basically somewhat flat right, you are able to not only
continue the quality of life in a familiar surrounding of
your neighborhood, your neighbors, your support system, knowing everything, all
(40:08):
the services are near you, when the rest of the
real estate market is saying you got to scale down,
move somewhere else, and you're basically going to give away
some of the quality of life that has appreciated your
home and your neighborhood over the years you've been in
there by moving away from that, but if you actually
figure out a way to stay in that home and
be able to hold off the sell or the transition
(40:28):
five to ten, fifteen years, you're now in more of
a of a driving seat driver's seat of when you
sell and what the market value is at that time.
And you've also gained the ability to continue and maintain
a quality of life that you want on your terms longer.
So it's not just a it's not just it's not
(40:50):
an aesthetic solution only. It is not a just a
a you know, a freedom of mobility solution only it
has direct impact on your portfolio and the family assets.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Well.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
And there's a lot of value to building your home,
especially as our population ages and the number of people
in our population who are older increases, Homes that have
opportunities are going.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
To be more desirable and there's a little bit more
centory are of them, so you basically can garner a
better selling price.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Single story homes.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You're a start cookie, my friend. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Exactly right.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Single story homes are so hard to find and homes
with downstairs bedrooms the same thing. They're very difficult to find, yep,
but they're not impossible. The good thing is things like
elevators are much easier to install in homes than they
ever were. That's always an opportunity. But that's another subject
for another day.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
But you also need you also, I mean, when you
start looking at these solutions to add into an environment,
I think the important thing also to emphasize is that
you can do it piecemeal, product by product, or you
can actually plan for it in such a way that
it simply as putting in like I'm doing a let's
say we're doing a bathroom remodel because the kids moved out,
and I'm remodeling the bathrooms or whatever. Twenty cents worth
(42:12):
of plywood in the right location, at the right height
in the behind the tile that's expensive that you waited
three months to get from Italy. Okay, it's going to
make it a lot easier for you to install a
grab bar, one that's maybe esthetically to your liking, or
maybe even one that's hidden in the wall like the
color has some of those, and basically account for all
of that in advance so that you don't basically have
(42:36):
to go and basically rip out that tile or risk
the thing not holding or whatever later. So I think
even when you are looking at solutions to incorporate, it's
important to note and be reminded that you have the
ability to approach it from a holistic perspective of an
overall effect of what you want your overall quality of
(42:57):
life to be in that environment. You don't have to
settle for you know, here's the section cup things that
are from Walmart, and here's the you know, not knocking Molmart,
but you know, like you're getting sometf from Amazon. You're
drilling the wall and putting it on the weekend. Great,
But I think having a master plan for how you're
going to retrofit the whole house. Are you gonna are
(43:19):
you going to put in a a sauna or a steam?
Are you going to do in a wellness layer in
the house that basically allows you to maintain your health
mental state during the court, Like, there's other layers to
this that are health and wellness that we all could
benefit from, whether we are having difficulty mobility wise or
(43:42):
we are in a wheelchair temporarily or otherwise. I mean,
you got people that are that are older people active adults.
I would say that are weekend warriors. They bicycle, they
you know, they have they have they have knee surgeries,
they have hip replacements, they have things that that nature. Right.
So if you basically have a house that you're doing
(44:03):
remodeling to because it was time, it's been time. You
want to remodel the kitchen, run in the bathroom, change
the rooms, open up cortors. If you already build all
that in there, no matter what life throws at you,
you're to be able to navigate it.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Right and to stay there and make it more pleasant.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Because when you're impacted like that, you're already taking a
hit on your psychological state of mind. You're being read
from a hospital or whatever. Right, the last thing I
think you would want to do is go to that
sanctuary and home environment that you are you are looking
to hold you okay, and end up basically where you're
(44:44):
where you're where you're now additionally impacted because your home
has been ripped apart, so your sanctuary is not pristine
when you need it the most. In order to provide
for you an environment of healing.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
If money was no object, what are some of the
changes that you would suggest that people make And are
you saying by just listening to you, are you saying that,
rather than make small changes at a time, that people
should do a grander remodel.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
I don't say that. I'm not saying that they have
to do a grander remodel. I'm saying that, and I
advise this to all my clients. Even though your rollout
and implementation may be in phases, it is really good
to have a master plan of where you want to end. Okay,
all right, because you can still phase it, you can
still stagger it, you can still do it in a
(45:37):
manner that makes sense. What goes what comes first, and
what's more priority and what's more important. Right. But I
think if you have a master plan and that goes
actually for people that have enough room to put in
an ADU, that goes out also to the outside environment,
the outside backyard, right engagement, especially in places like California
(45:58):
or we have the ability to you know, you appreciate
the weather for a majority of the year, Like that's
part of that step outside being nature, be around your roses, whatever, like,
you know, how how do you engage people in their
outside as well as they inside indoor outdoor living. I
think some of the things that I would say is,
(46:19):
in most cases, most people look at their kitchens, look
at their bathrooms, right, and they sit because that's sort
of it's sort of an understandable renovation project for an
existent home. Right.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
People understand that, right.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
But when you're doing that, are you accounting, for example,
that you may have multi generations in your household, whether
on holidays only or other times. Are you going to want,
for example, is it important for you that grandma basically
is able to share the recipes for the stuff that
she may have done with your grandkids or with her
grandkids around an environment in the kitchen where now it's
(46:58):
a social gathering space, or is am I going to
be sitting in the other room or in a wheelchair
feeling isolated from the experience. Like, there's things like that
that are almost bespoke, customizable to every family and how
they basically live and what their aspirations are in passing
on legacy and traditions. So I think bathrooms and kitchens
(47:20):
is one of the things bathrooms, depending on what it is,
I agree with you on hundred percent. The first thing
that anybody should do is figure out a way to
basically maybe niche out or add on a sleeping area
that maybe could be multifunctional in anticipation for maybe needing
to care for a parent, or maybe if somebody gets
(47:41):
injured temporarily and needs to be you know, bed needs
to be rolled in there. If you could doublop as
an office could double up as a gym. Is fitness
and health and important factor for people's lives, in which case,
how can we incorporate some of those features like steams
on and maybe in that bathroom remodel that you're doing,
we do we do we provide a a sauna and
(48:03):
a workout area in the gym or gym area in
one of the garages. Do we bring that into a home,
because then you are able to maintain your fitness regiment
more so than every time we got to get a
car and go to the gym necessarily. Plus there's a
cost saving in a way. But there's also things as
simple as if you're redoing the front yard or redoing
(48:24):
some landscaping. Uh, a lot of people may want to
do you know, step ups or land you know kind
of things, but you could easily do like a very
leisurely ramp that basically leads to the front door and
hide it even within the landscaping. And I gotta tell you,
if you know, regardless, if you know, if you're at
an airport, for example, and there's a ramp, you use
(48:47):
the ramp like ramp is kind of an interesting thing,
right stairs. It's not that you don't, we won't. You
won't take the stairs, but there's other ways to basically
infuse some of this stuff. So if you can incur
cost or add money and improvements to your house, you
should definitely be considering for yourself, for loved ones to
(49:08):
your point, for potential resale to an aging population that
is well healed and has the resources, what would be
some of the things you should incorporate into your design.
Because if the incremental additional cost, if there is one,
actually is minimal, the feak that the value is in
(49:31):
having the right people on board that are guiding you,
willing to have these conversations with you, willing to basically
ask these questions that are not necessarily that may seem
a little intrusive, but in a very respectful way, and
then basically designing and planning the project to account for
all these things that you may want to now add
on as incremental benefits, the cost tends to be minuscul
(49:54):
You're still going to use herd surfaces, you're still going
to build that kitchen counter, You're still going to basically
do innovation on the corridors. You may replace your doors,
So do you widen your doors now and just put
in a thirty six inch door if you can versus
twenty four Not necessarily everywhere if it's in existent house,
but wherever you can, do you take out little column
separations in the hallways that allow for four foot you know,
(50:16):
circulation or at the very least three foot clearances between things.
You know. It's just applying some of that Universal Design
and EIGHTA guidelines that we use in commercial because every
hotel that anybody's gone to, every restaurant that everybody's gone
to since ninety eight whatever it was ninety seven I
think was the eighty eight came in. Okay, every one
(50:36):
of those has factored in those requirements to some degree
or the other because they were forced to Residential real
estate residential construction development does not have that requirement. But
I have argued for the last at least decade that
any smart contractor any smart home builder that is basically
(50:58):
looking to appeal to a group of people that are
usually not addressed, their needs are not addressed, and in
doing so provide a product that not only meets the
needs of everybody else, but also meets the needs of
this group of people which tend to be in a
position most cases, especially in places like California, like southern California,
(51:19):
Orange County, where it's an affluent base. I mean, somebody
may actually have somebody who is a child that for
life has actually been you know, a paraplegic or had
an accident in a high school or a surfing accident,
and now for the next god knows how many years
long the life that they may have, they are now
facing these difficulties. It's not just an aging situation. It's
(51:41):
a universal solution that benefits everybody.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
It is. It is.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Unfortunately we are out of time. We loved chatting with you, Dan.
I hope that you'll come back.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
Oh, I would love to come back anytime.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
I'm glad that we had some time to talk about
your trip to Africa and your mid life transformation.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
So if I may value I just want to tell
people if you're interested in finding out more about that
midlife transformation thing and sort of the pivot. Go to
the rad life t H E r A A D
l I f E dot com right the whole thing
in the URL and check it out. There's a magazine there,
there's articles there, there's a link to the podcast that's
(52:22):
been going on for ten years with new episodes there,
and some recommendations of stuff that I actually used. It's
not really influencer stuff, it's stuff that I use to
basically enhance my life at this point. And there's a
whole bunch of reading books too that I love to read.
So I've shared a lot of book titles that I've
read and let me know what you guys think. Reach
out to me and Valerie. Yeah, absolutely, I will take
(52:44):
you up on an invitation anytime.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
We'd love to have you.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
So.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
One thing I loved about today's conversations that it reminds
us of design isn't just about how a space looks,
but how it lives and how we can live in
that space. So, whether it's an ADU for a parent,
a multi gen home keeps a family coast, or simply
updating a bathroom or kitchen for.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Safety and dignity.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
The spaces we create shape the way that we age,
connect and thrive. Rad you've shown us, Rod, You've shown
us that the design can be a form of freedom
and might inspire you to jump off cliff into a waterfall,
and it can support independence, nurture wellness, and give families
the tools to face the transitions with confidence instead of
(53:27):
fear and instead of uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
So thank you Rod very much for sharing.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
So until next time, remember to come back again next
week for another episode of Always Ageless. Remember age is
just a number, but how you design your life and
your space that is always ageless.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Thank you Rod for being with us today.
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