[0:00:00] Brett Johnson: We are Looking Forward Our Way, from Studio C in the 511 studios in the Brewery District just south of downtown Columbus, Ohio. Hi. This is Brett. Carol and I have discussed many issues impacting seniors in our community. However, one issue has literally exploded in Central Ohio, and we're probably not alone for those of any age, and that's housing. We wanted to delve into that topic and discover more on the resources available to seniors aging in place at home.

[0:00:28] Carol Ventresca: Brett, I am so thankful that we have our two guests joining us today on this topic because it's such a critical issue. It seems like no matter who you're talking to, housing comes up, particularly when you're talking about seniors. Their information and expertise are going to provide our audience with not just tips, but valuable information on the steps needed to keep seniors in their home, but keep them safe and secure. So let's welcome Frances Krumholtz, who is the volunteer and engagement coordinator for the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging, and she's also the local liaison for the Nesterly program. We also have Donald Wiggins, the executive director of Village Connections, which covers the Columbus downtown area, as well as the communities of German Village, Schumacher Place, the Brewery District, and Marion Village. So Francis and Donald, thank you so much for joining us today.

[0:01:28] Frances Krumholtz: Thanks so much for having us.

[0:01:30] Donald Wiggins: Thank you so much.

[0:01:31] Brett Johnson: Yeah. Hey, before we get into details on the programs, let's first learn a little bit about each of you, your backgrounds and how you moved into this area of senior services, specifically addressing the housing situation. Francis, let's start with you.

[0:01:45] Frances Krumholtz: Sure. So my personal interest in housing actually goes all the way back to my undergraduate days. One of my majors at the Ohio State University was sociology, and within that focus, I actually developed an independent study course where I could really dive deep on homelessness. That was one of the issues that's kind of threaded throughout that sociology study that was really interesting to me. Since then, my professional experience has been in different nonprofits here in Central Ohio, and so I've been able to see again, a lot of different issues that kind of overlap and interplay into that housing space. I've now been at COA for about four years, and I've been really fortunate to have this intergenerational home sharing focus be a through line of that work. I've worked on other projects and programs as well, but this is something that has kind of been consistent throughout my four years here. And as you mentioned in the intro and we're certainly seeing at our agency, is that housing is just an increasingly urgent focus area for us.

[0:02:53] Carol Ventresca: Wonderful.

[0:02:55] Donald Wiggins: Great. So I have a somewhat different background. I spent 28 years with Federated Department Stores. Locally. It was Lazarus, and I managed stores and was a regional for them. I managed their volunteer program for the state of Ohio. So I worked with a lot of nonprofits in that aspect. As far as my role here with Village Connections, I spent the last six years prior to my joining this organization taking care of my aging in laws in conjunction with my wife at home. And so I saw many, many things that I'd hoped would be different. We were fortunate. We could keep them in their own home, but we didn't have the resources that we needed. And so when this opportunity came up, I thought, this is a great opportunity to help older adults. And now I know the resources. I know who to call. I know all those things that I wish we would have had because it would have made it a lot easier.

[0:04:07] Carol Ventresca: That's interesting. Both of you have our progression lines are connecting. I took care of my parents, and I can remember back in the mid 70s when they bought their ranch home and they were so excited because there were no steps in this ranch home so they could get around. They forgot there was a step between the kitchen and the rec room and between the rec room and the garage. So when my dad had a stroke, that was it. I mean, even one step made a huge difference in their life. And, Francis, I have to tell you, brett and I have a little bit of a game that we play because I have more OSU people scheduled to come on to and Otterbine to the podcast than his Miami alum. There's nothing about distance, sure, but also we sociologists have to stick together.

[0:05:03] Frances Krumholtz: There we go. Yes.

[0:05:05] Carol Ventresca: I just had to get my plug in there. Thank you for that information about your backgrounds. Seniors do prefer to remain in their homes and age gracefully, which I always thought was sort of an interesting comment or phrase, because, needless to say, we've seen the other thing happen, and it's aging in place, but not aging gracefully. But they want to remain independent. We know how moving is stressful. We've all been through that. Again, what do they do with their stuff? We've gotten rid of our parents items, and it's not easy. Folks don't want to leave their community, their friends, their neighbors. And we know that loneliness is a concern, particularly since COVID it's really come around. They are emotionally tied to that family home where they raise their children. Fear of the unknown is debilitating. And we have 75,000 homeowners in Franklin County who are over 65. Tell us about the number of people that you are serving in your programs and the people that are coming to you for help. Maybe you can't actually bring them in as a client, but just the things that you're hearing.

[0:06:22] Carol Ventresca: Donald, tell us about what you're hearing.

[0:06:24] Donald Wiggins: Great. Thank you. So, really, if you look at the most recent census, there are almost 94,000 people 65 and older that live in Franklin County. The homeowners is one thing, but we serve people who live in apartments and whatever. It's really an age thing for us. And collectively, I would tell you that, as you all know, there are other villages here in the city. I think we're serving probably around 800 people collectively within the villages here in the city, which that's not even 1% of the folks. So there's tremendous opportunity out there to have that whole awareness, and that the opportunity is there. It's very easy as a child to make the decision for your parents that it's time for them to move to assisted facilities and it way be necessary. There may be things that preclude you making that decision. However, if you take a step back and look at the reality of where they are in their life, the worst thing that you can do is take that independence away from them. People who live the statistics are overwhelming. People who are able to stay in their homes, they're healthier, they're happier, and in most cases, while they're thriving because you're not taking them away from everything they know. First thing you want to do is take their car away and then you go in the house and say, you need to get rid of this stuff. That's their stuff.

[0:08:16] Donald Wiggins: That's their history. That's their life. And we just do that too often where we just strip them of everything. And that's debilitating.

[0:08:28] Carol Ventresca: Debilitating. It isn't. Are people calling your office with questions that are outside of the village parameters? I guess my fear is that because people are trying so hard to stay in their home, other things are becoming even more desperate. I mean, just financially, anybody who thinks that moving out of your house is is good financially has not looked at.

[0:09:02] Donald Wiggins: The cost yeah, they haven't looked at the cost of a facility, that's for sure.

[0:09:05] Brett Johnson: Exactly.

[0:09:07] Donald Wiggins: No, and the other thing is that I swore I would never talk about COVID again, but COVID really made a lot of our members in particular, made their families glad that they had not pushed them to leave their homes. Because I'm happy to tell you, we and I can't speak for the other villages. I can only speak for ours here. We didn't have a single member come down with COVID Oh, that's wonderful. Because we made the conscious effort to schedule appointments for them to get their vaccines. We scheduled rides so that we could get them to their vaccines. And then we had a myriad of things, which we'll talk about later, that just kept them going.

[0:09:51] Carol Ventresca: Very good.

[0:09:53] Donald Wiggins: Yeah.

[0:09:54] Carol Ventresca: Francis, tell us about Nesterly.

[0:09:57] Frances Krumholtz: Yeah. Well, first, I do want to just give the quickest of plugs to my agency in general. So COA serves nearly 15,000 people, and that's an eight county region. That's not just Franklin County or Columbus, but still not an insignificant number of folks who we are connecting with services and information to help them continue to age in their home. For Nesterly, which we had the inauspicious timing of launching in fall of 2019 we have had about 100 hosts sign up to create an account and about 400 guests. So lots of people who are interested in finding a room and a little bit slower, I think traction in finding hosts who are a right fit for the program. But we're really excited to continue to grow that, that's wonderful.

[0:10:56] Brett Johnson: Well, we kind of touched upon this earlier that the reasons are to the Infinity to keep an older adult from remaining home. It could be the cost or rent a mortgage is going to be high or on that fixed income property taxes as we just talked about too maneuvering in the home or just because of their health. I want to start with Francis. Could you tell us about your programs and how they address these issues? I mean, could you also provide some examples of how you have supported the clients with this too?

[0:11:29] Frances Krumholtz: Sure. So I'll start off with just kind of a couple of definitions because again, 500 users total isn't a huge number. A lot of people might not be familiar yet with Nesterly. We are an intergenerational home sharing platform. It's all online and home sharing just to start with that. It's just a living arrangement where two or more people who are not related share a home together. So a lot of us have already home shared even if we're not necessarily we weren't necessarily naming it home sharing when we were doing it but a lot of us have lived with a roommate, that type of thing. I think that coming approaching home sharing with an intergenerational lens is really interesting and just has outsized positive impacts for both parties. There thinking about Nesterly specifically COA partnered with Nesterly and I know we'll talk a little bit more about that origin story shortly. But our goal was to make it safe and easy for people to home share. And some of those benefits, the financial ones are the most obvious. I think hosts are receiving this additional earned income every month so that can help with whether it's a rising property tax. We're all seeing this increased cost of living. It certainly helps with that. And on the guest side of the equation it's going to be a much more affordable place to live than kind of the standard rent that is out there in the market.

[0:13:10] Frances Krumholtz: But we then get to see all of this fun kind of social benefit as well which we know also has an outsized impact on physical well being. So it's helping with mental health, it's helping with build out those social networks and just camaraderie but that has physical health impacts as well. One of the tools within Nesterly too to kind of help out with that is something that they call the task exchange feature. So if a host is looking for some additional help around the house, things like mowing the lawn, we've got springtime right now. So starting to think about some of that basic lawn maintenance or someone who's willing to run out to do the grocery run on a weekly basis. They can actually build that into the home share agreement and find a guest who's willing to do those extra chores around the house in exchange for a greater reduction in rent. So again, kind of providing that win win within the home.

[0:14:14] Carol Ventresca: I think the one thing I want to touch base on that you've mentioned is that Nesterly in your position, you're ensuring the safety of the individual who the older adult who is hosting so that they're not going out on the limb financially, you're doing the background checks, all those kinds of things. That's what I love about Nesterly is that it's helping the younger person in terms of a lower cost of rent and living. But it's definitely helping the older person because when we're talking about all the scams and things that are going on, this precludes that from happening.

[0:14:54] Frances Krumholtz: Absolutely. And it's really the protections are there. I think the hosts and the guests, they both benefit from that. They do about four or five different background checks. It requires an application. Nesterly will check references. There's built in payment processing also. So all of that is automated and we do everything in our power to make sure that it's a seamless positive experience. But if any issue does come up, then there's a whole team that is there that can respond to things early on and kind of step in and help Mitigate if necessary. But yeah, absolutely. There's just so much peace of mind that is tied up with going through a vetted resource.

[0:15:44] Brett Johnson: Is it a typical, like a year agreement lease kind of feel to it or is it different variable lengths of time?

[0:15:51] Frances Krumholtz: Different lengths of time. So locally, on average, we see about six months. The only requirement, I suppose it's got to be a minimum of 30 days. So it's not for a short term stay. We really do want this to be truly a home share. Right? You're living with somebody so at least 30 days. But yeah, on average we see about six months.

[0:16:15] Donald Wiggins: So we provide rides to medical appointments, we grocery shop for folks. We do not provide in home health care, but we have vetted resources that we can refer people to. We don't endorse anybody in particular. But the one thing that all of our villages will do is if somebody's looking at a resource, we'll provide a volunteer as a second set of eyes or ears to be there with them so that somebody's hearing. Because we serve a lot, 78% of the people that we serve in village connections are single households and most of those are single women. So we always try to make sure that that protective barrier is built in there and for their safety and also for their well being and their concern as far as we're membership based. So there is a fee to belong to the village. It's a very nominal fee. I guess it's okay to say the fee for a single individual, single person household is $500 annually. It's 750 for a two person or more household annually. I had somebody question me once and say, oh, my gosh, that sounds like a lot of money. Well, when you hear $500, $500 is a lot of money. But if you had a person sign up about a year ago who visits the James twice a month, twice a month round trip, uber was $65 a trip. So you think about that. That's $130 a month it won't belong to their membership is more than paid for itself.

[0:18:05] Donald Wiggins: And that didn't include the fact that we were grocery shopping with this individual every week. So it's really cost effective. The other thing that we do is we break it down for them. If it's a single person, if it's easier for you to pay for $45 a month, you know what? We're happy to do that, or however you want to do it. We just want to make it easy. What we want is to make sure that you have the resources you need to be comfortable and stay where you're comfortable.

[0:18:35] Carol Ventresca: Right. And you're focusing in on not just that somebody can stay at home, but those kinds of things that make them most vulnerable. The fact that they may or may not be able to drive, the fact that even if they have to go to the doctor, uber is going to drop them at the door. What do they do from the door into the building? Those are the grocery shopping. Those are the kinds of things that it's not just a service, it's a security blanket around that individual.

[0:19:11] Donald Wiggins: Yeah, absolutely. Because we require that when we pick you up for a medical appointment, that our volunteers we're totally volunteer driven. We're volunteer powered organization, if you will, and we require that you go to the door, get the member, help them into the car. When you get to their appointment, you park as close as you can or let them out and tell them, sit there while be right there with you. We take them in, we get them checked in, and then they have the option to either stay or the member can call when they're done and you go back in the building into the doctor's office and get them. So it's that personalized service and security for them that they know that they're not out there alone.

[0:20:03] Carol Ventresca: Familiar face.

[0:20:04] Donald Wiggins: Yeah.

[0:20:06] Carol Ventresca: That's so valuable.

[0:20:07] Donald Wiggins: Right. When you call somebody and say, francis is going to be your volunteer tomorrow. I don't think I know Francis. Well, you probably do, but if you don't, francis is going to call you the night before, and she's going to introduce herself. She's going to tell you what kind of car she's in. If you take an Uber if you're not out there, boom, they're gone, and you still pay for that appointment. And the other thing is that oh, that's right. You have to have a smart device to use Uber. 25% of our folks don't have the Internet or have a smartphone or any.

[0:20:44] Carol Ventresca: Way to do those sort of things.

[0:20:46] Brett Johnson: I think he just volunteered you.

[0:20:49] Frances Krumholtz: That's all right. Yeah.

[0:20:54] Carol Ventresca: The AAA offices are too far away. Brett and I have talked about both of these programs, and I'm so excited because in my time as the director of a nonprofit serving seniors, I've seen these programs grow and how people kind of look at you, like, what what are they taught? Nesterly never heard of it. How did these programs end up in Columbus? I think that this is a really interesting background for each donald, let's go ahead and talk to us about the villages.

[0:21:33] Donald Wiggins: Okay, well, I'm happy to do that. So this concept of village life started in the Boston area in Beacon Hill, and one of our now members saw an article about this in The New York Times, and she brought it to the German Village Society Long Range Planning Commission. And is it okay if I use her name?

[0:22:04] Carol Ventresca: Would she want you to use her?

[0:22:05] Donald Wiggins: I don't think she'll care.

[0:22:07] Carol Ventresca: Go for it.

[0:22:07] Donald Wiggins: She should be very happy.

[0:22:09] Carol Ventresca: Give her a shout out.

[0:22:10] Donald Wiggins: That's right. So Janet Drewin and Ed Alberfeld are our founders. Okay. They brought this concept to the German Village Society Long Range Planning Commission, and they said, Is this something that we can do here? And the German Village Society thought, yeah, this is good, but the missions are different because the German Village Society is about historic preservation. Well, I think there's something connected there, but they didn't think so, quite honestly. But there was a lot of discussion around it. And so the German Village Society then was very instrumental in helping us get our 501 C Three. We're a freestanding 501 C three, and I'm happy to tell you that we just celebrated our 10th birthday last year.

[0:23:07] Carol Ventresca: Isn't that incredible?

[0:23:09] Donald Wiggins: Village Connections was the first village in central Ohio, and, you know, it's just grown since there. I'm not sure exactly. I think that village in the Ville, I think they started in 2014, I believe, and then in 2019, it started growing. And now there's a greater Columbus network of villages. So we have seven villages now. We cover our our area. There's another village that covers the short north and goes up to Clintonville. There's one in Clintonville. There's one on the hilltop. There's one on the Near East side. One just opened about four months ago. Francis, five months ago in Arlington. What a great place for a village. And then there's actually a village in Union County, which I applaud those folks because they travel miles to service their people.

[0:24:16] Carol Ventresca: Isn't there also a village type of program in Dublin?

[0:24:22] Donald Wiggins: There's a senior, I think, a senior program. Westerville has a senior program. When I joined Bexley was on the verge of jumping into a village concept. And then when the politics changed there, it kind of shut down. But they now have a 55 plus senior program. But it's mainly a program for socialization. They don't do services.

[0:24:49] Carol Ventresca: That's one of the things I wanted to shout out with our audience is that the village program has expanded across the country. So if you're listening to this podcast and you don't live in central Ohio, it way be close to your home and you don't realize it, we will have in our show notes links for you to take a look and see where the other village programs are located.

[0:25:12] Donald Wiggins: Yeah, they're all across the country now and the Village to Village network is headquartered in St. Louis.

[0:25:18] Carol Ventresca: Okay.

[0:25:19] Donald Wiggins: All right.

[0:25:19] Carol Ventresca: And I would say that German Village is as close to Beacon Hill as.

[0:25:23] Donald Wiggins: We could ever well, that's why Janet and Ed thought it's similar neighborhood concept and whatever. And they did a lot of interest, community interest surveys and whatever and the rest is history.

[0:25:38] Carol Ventresca: Ten years. You all have been really hitting it for the ten years.

[0:25:45] Donald Wiggins: Thanks. I'll tell you, it's a very rewarding thing. But one thing that I'd like to point out though is that at the inception they really believed they those who were pulling this all together thought it was all going to be about transportation. And we learned very, very quickly in the organization that really the socialization piece and component were the most important things. So that's why during COVID we had hotlines that we were talking to people once a week. We had telephone conversations, we had volunteers calling people, we had members calling members. It's that just keeping people connected is.

[0:26:34] Carol Ventresca: So important and audience. Also, you may not need services from a village, a local village, but you may be interested in being a volunteer. So again, check our show notes for more information. We'll have a list of all of the villages here in central Ohio as well as those links for you to find them across the country. Perfect. Now just happens that Nesterly is like down the road, right?

[0:26:59] Frances Krumholtz: Yes. Nesterly also had its founding in Boston. It was actually developed by an MIT student named Noel Marcus. She is still the CEO, so she launched it in 2017 and she kind of came about it in a different direction. Right. So at COA we were interested kind of first and foremost with the aging lens and the older population that we serve. Noel's initial curiosity was just about kind of housing and urban planning and through her studies learning the sheer number of unused bedrooms in these major metropolitan areas, way a real sticking point for me. A sticking point for her. Excuse me. That there were lots of people who had raised their families in their home and meanwhile their kids had grown up, moved out they're still very happy in their home, but had additional space they weren't using. So she also had the personal experience of having lived in an intergenerational home and recognized a lot of the benefits of those types of relationships. So she just kind of put together all of those puzzle pieces and knew that people would be more comfortable with the idea of home sharing if there could be kind of some safety parameters in place. So she was able to build out this platform that initially was just operating in Boston, and a lot of the leaders here in Central Ohio heard about it and thought, hey, that's interesting. I wonder if that could work here. An initial introduction was actually forged by the Age Friendly Innovation Center, and we were trying to figure out kind of who the best home for that would be.

[0:29:01] Frances Krumholtz: And COA was excited to be able to bring it on board again, because housing is such a prevalent issue because we know all of the benefits of intergenerational programming. It was really kind of doing a lot of things simultaneously. So a lot of those initial conversations preceded my time at the agency. But it's been very fun to pick up the baton and to kind of continue to talk about this idea of intergenerational home sharing and how it can benefit our community.

[0:29:35] Carol Ventresca: When you look at this population, as you said, predominantly older females living alone, and likely if they had children, grandchildren, they're scattered across the country. Now, in my world, I've seen a lot of the grandparents follow the kids and the grandchildren, but that's not always possible. But what a great way to not only help a young person in terms of lower cost rent, but to add that dimension of sort of the quasi grandmother and how much value is that? That's amazing.

[0:30:12] Frances Krumholtz: Yeah, there was a piece. This was covered by a national morning news show, and they did an interview. And one of the things that the host pointed out was exactly that. Just the energy that having this young person in her house, just how that changed the dynamic of her daily living experience, that she'd ask her guest, her tenant, technically. Hey, what are your plans this evening? Or, what are you doing this weekend? And the guests would be able to say, oh, I'm going out to dinner with some friends. We're celebrating having just turned in this big paper. And that the host herself was just so excited and was like, show me what you're going to wear. Just truly, completely changing her energy for the day versus if she had been.

[0:31:02] Carol Ventresca: In her house by herself and also a reason to make chocolate chip.

[0:31:07] Frances Krumholtz: There you go.

[0:31:08] Carol Ventresca: Yeah. Maybe I could find maybe I could be a tenant.

[0:31:16] Brett Johnson: Are there other programs around central Ohio or even around the country or state that also support seniors to remain in their home? Let's start with you, Francis.

[0:31:25] Frances Krumholtz: Sure. There are lots of different programs, and I would encourage folks to reach out to COA. We're kind of a standard. They call it this, like, no wrong door policy. But if you call our main reception desk, we'll be able to get you connected. So whether those are programs that we operate or provide case management for or if we're able to refer you to another organization. But there are so many things. There are so many social groups, senior centers, home delivered meals, home health aides, lots of different supports that you can get. Because we also know that even within aging, in home aging in your longtime home, that can mean a lot of different things depending on where you are in your aging process. And so COA is a great place for those resources, or even if you're providing care. We're also part of the national Caregiving Network. So if you're a family caregiver or caring for a spouse, you need support, too. And so COA is there to provide, again, that same support to help keep everybody in the home safe, comfortable, supported.

[0:32:41] Carol Ventresca: What's I think most important about calling your office, you have a team of experts who, if they don't know the answer right off the top of their head, they're willing to look for the answer for you. And when I became caregiver with my parents, that's exactly what I had done, is call COA, call Franklin County Office on Aging just for information listeners. The worst problem we have is we don't know what we don't know. And if you can't locate a number to call and start talking to somebody who has this expertise and list of resources, it's very frustrating. And so that's what's most important, is to use the resources. Central Ohio is blessed with the resources that we have.

[0:33:26] Brett Johnson: A similar question to you, Donald. You're the first village to really jump on this village idea. If you've had calls from around the country, around the state, how did you do this? How are you doing this?

[0:33:37] Donald Wiggins: We actually have mentored a few other folks from other states. We just talked to a young woman from West Virginia a couple of weeks ago. They're thinking about at the university there. The university is thinking about taking on a program. So she was really interested in how we started and kind of what we did. And I asked her. I didn't really realize until I got into this business how invaluable COA was and the multitude of resources that they have. Franklin County Often Office on Aging you mentioned they help us financially, as does COA, provides funding to us for different things. So that in itself, they support different programs that we do. But yes, to answer that question, specifically, the village to village network, a lot of times will have somebody reach out to us just because we've been at it the longest.

[0:34:42] Brett Johnson: Yeah, makes sense.

[0:34:43] Donald Wiggins: Makes sense.

[0:34:45] Carol Ventresca: How are people finding you? What is going on? In the referral process that people are able to find you and get more information about your program. Is it word of mouth? Is it just people who find out from a friend relative? I would think Nesterly would be a little harder to find than even the Villages.

[0:35:04] Frances Krumholtz: Nesterly is kind of interesting, so we do try to get out in the community and give presentations and talk to neighborhood groups. I think that there is value in hearing about that particular platform and service from a real life person who is standing in front of you, who also has a phone number that you can call if you have a question. Right. It is a web based service, but we also provide that human touch and that human support. So some of it is through that type of community education and outreach. I do think a fair amount of it is word of mouth. We also see people who will find out about it through the Aging and Disability Resource Network, which COA is a part of. So sometimes that is someone who has either called again, that main front door phone number at COA, or they might be involved in another program or another resource and they'll find out about it that way. I get a fair number of calls too, again from Franklin County. The Office on Aging does really incredible work, sometimes from different healthcare providers. I hear from a lot of different people. I think with Nestorly, it's a good thing to think about earlier rather than later. So it's a great way to kind of enhance your experience of living at home independently rather than waiting. If something is already precarious, it makes necessarily a tougher fit. But if you can think about it again early on and just as a way to kind of add some extra, ump, both financially and socially, to kind of your daily lived experience, I think that's the best time for folks to find us common inflection points that we see might be again when kids have moved away to college, when somebody retires, and often when someone becomes a widow.

[0:37:12] Frances Krumholtz: Those are some common inflection points where people start to think what might it be like to have somebody else living here?

[0:37:19] Carol Ventresca: Is Nesterly only. Franklin county.

[0:37:22] Frances Krumholtz: It is not. So we've got, I believe it is a 50 miles radius out from Columbus, so it pretty safely covers the same eight county region that COA covers.

[0:37:37] Carol Ventresca: Okay, that's good to know because you don't have to be in the middle of the city. No, it could be somebody who is a little farther out, but they're going to school somewhere and there isn't a lot of housing on some of the smaller campuses.

[0:37:51] Frances Krumholtz: Yeah, most of the places where we have seen the listings actually come up on the map. Those do tend to be Columbus, but we've also seen Delaware, we've seen Reynoldsburg, we've seen Grove City. So we do see it kind of spreading out through Central Ohio, which we love to see. Nice.

[0:38:09] Carol Ventresca: So, Donald, do you want to tell us a little bit more about how are people finding you?

[0:38:14] Donald Wiggins: Yeah, so I think we're pretty much word of mouth. I do a lot of outreach in clubs. Listen, anybody who will agree to give me a cup of coffee and let me stand up for ten minutes, I'm there for you. But I think that we are so underexposed. There's so much opportunity out there for people to know more about these programs. I talked to a new couple the other day who joined the organization. They were like, we heard about this when you started, but then we just really didn't think. I talked to my friends, and they said, you really should do that. And so we thought we'd give you a call. And I'm like, okay, well, they're 89 and 90 years old. Okay, bring it on. I talked to a couple the other day that were 91 and 92, and they said, you know what? We're just not there yet. Okay. Just not there yet.

[0:39:27] Donald Wiggins: And I'm like, okay, well, when you are, here's my card. I think a lot of the hesitation and people's resistance is they're not ready because they think that means they're giving up something. Their kids have already taken their car keys away from them, and they've told them they need to be moving stuff around in the house and getting rid of stuff and whatever, and that's the worst thing you can do to somebody. This is your life. This is everything that means something to you. It's a hard thing to do.

[0:40:11] Brett Johnson: I just love that envision a 90 year old person saying, just not there yet. Yeah, just not there. I love that. That's so positive. That's, like, we've got five, six years before we need to even think about using you guys.

[0:40:25] Donald Wiggins: Well, Brett it is. No, but I shared with Brett when I came in. I am very blessed. My parents are both 91 years old, and they live independently, and my dad's still driving. Don't even think about taking his car keys away from him. But they're like, oh, yeah, we're fine. We don't need anybody. We don't need any help.

[0:40:46] Carol Ventresca: I have, like, a second mom who was living in independent living when she first got there. She was going strong, driving all over the place. So you have the 89, 91 year old driving? The 95 year old.

[0:41:08] Frances Krumholtz: My great aunt, well into her mid 90s, used to make their rounds to the nursing facility in my hometown to check in on the old people who were often 15 or 20 years younger than she was at the time.

[0:41:22] Carol Ventresca: This is the greatest generation we're talking about, and we can only hope that we are in the same spot that they are, because they're doing okay. Oh, my God. Let's go back a little bit to people finding you. So I thought you were going to say, well, it's a small community. We can pretty much reach out to everybody. Not necessarily because the population is not necessarily connected on social media.

[0:41:51] Donald Wiggins: That's true.

[0:41:51] Carol Ventresca: Everything else is expensive.

[0:41:53] Donald Wiggins: It is expensive, and it's just I think it's hard sometimes to the concept. I think it's hard to wrap your arms around Nesterly what a wonderful concept, but it's a hard thing to wrap your head around. The Village people driving me to the doctor all the time. I just don't know if I'm ready for that yet. Eleanor next door, she goes and gets our groceries for us. I think about, like, as a child, we had a couple that lived across the street from us, and the browns never raked their leaves. They never shoveled snow. My mom was a woman, way ahead of her time. She drove a car back then, and she always took her to the grocery store. So I was living village life as a child, not understanding what was going on around me. I think the challenge today, and I know this isn't directly answering our question, but neighborhoods are so transient. It isn't like it used to be. People just stayed in a neighborhood. And then you look at we're here in German Village, it's constantly changing. And I think that's the best we can do is get people to think about the neighbors helping neighbors concept and getting our folks who could benefit from the program to buy into that.

[0:43:19] Donald Wiggins: Neighbors helping neighbors.

[0:43:20] Carol Ventresca: Does the churn of people moving in and out of German Village and the other areas, does that affect your volunteer base?

[0:43:27] Donald Wiggins: It actually hasn't.

[0:43:29] Carol Ventresca: That's good.

[0:43:29] Donald Wiggins: Yeah. I mean, we're not unlike we're all looking for volunteers. It doesn't matter where you are today, but it really doesn't. It seems like people, once they're with you, they're there.

[0:43:41] Carol Ventresca: Good.

[0:43:42] Donald Wiggins: Which isn't reinforcing it right.

[0:43:45] Brett Johnson: There. Hasn't been a guest for our podcast since COVID that hasn't talked about how their programs, how their business has gone through dramatic changes because of COVID Can you give us some examples of what worked well, what changed? And of course, any tips on new services coming to your programs?

[0:44:02] Donald Wiggins: Donald yeah, one of the things I'm most proud of that we did during COVID was we had what we called porch parties.

[0:44:10] Carol Ventresca: Ours were driveway parties.

[0:44:11] Donald Wiggins: Yeah. And we would gather three or four people, max, whoever we could put on a porch or a patio or whatever, socially distanced, masked and whatever, and we would pull them together at somebody's house and have a little refreshments and whatever. And I can tell you, picking the members up and taking them there was one thing taking them home, my heart was smiling because they had smiles on their face, and just to see them chitter chattering and whatever, we made every attempt, as I said earlier, to call our members once a week. We had zoom calls. We had just regular telephone calls. We did the porch parties. Our volunteers were putting together cookie packets or little things or some of the other COA and was providing us with things that we could put in little bags. And so we were trying to monthly drop something off. But that was probably it was a really challenging year because I'm very happy to tell you, we did not shut down operations because we decided that's when they needed us the most, we weren't taking them to medical appointments, but there were more prescriptions, there was more grocery shopping. There were the touch points. Out of COVID came a program that we're doing now. We call it supper club. And once a month as we're grocery shopping and picking up all these 950 milligram premade dinners that they're buying, we're thinking, gosh, could we get a healthy meal into them at least once a month? So we have a committee that meets. They decide on a menu.

[0:46:04] Donald Wiggins: It's all healthy food. We have volunteers cook the food, we package it, other volunteers take it out and deliver it. We're actually, starting this month, a partnership with the Ohio Poultry Association. And they're going to do brunch one Saturday a month, where again, they're going to feed our volunteers that deliver and they're going to prepare. They're going to pay for everything. And then we'll take that out and we have more people signed up for this brunch thingy than we do our monthly dinners.

[0:46:36] Brett Johnson: Poultry association has to watch where they move their offices that they moved in German Village. So you're going to knock on the door?

[0:46:42] Donald Wiggins: That's right. Well, and Jim SHAKARIS, who's his mom happens to be a member. So we might have it in there. Might have it in there. Yes, he is. But I see that as another opportunity for us to really be partnering with the community. And the community it's neighbors serving neighbors.

[0:47:04] Frances Krumholtz: Right. Meanwhile, for the Nesterly side of things, our COVID response was pretty different. Right during particularly that first year, the operations stayed up and it remained an option for folks who were interested in that. We had a few hosts actually, early on who were specifically interested in finding and helping, if there were any international students who weren't able to get home, that they wanted to offer their space as a potential living arrangement for them. So we also definitely saw the community kind of band together. I think that one of the innovations that was developed in response to COVID that Nestorly has kept to this day is the addition of video conferencing to their chat software. So if someone is interested on either the host or guest side, the very first way that you are communicating with that person is kind of within the Nesterly service. You're either typing a message to them or you can arrange a time to do a video chat. And kind of even if you're not in person, at least get some of that face to face communication and so that was something that added a value long term as well. So they've been able to keep that.

[0:48:35] Carol Ventresca: Great. I say this every time in every one of our episodes, the time goes so fast and we get so much wonderful information from our guests. But I think that we also hear some incredible parting ideas and tips from all of our guests to our audience. So if there's something that we haven't talked about or something that you really want to get across or just a really important message that you want to make sure the audience hears yeah, I.

[0:49:10] Donald Wiggins: Would say that aging is definitely a privilege and it's a privilege that not everyone gets to take part in. And so I think that we owe it to our more experienced neighbors to provide them the opportunity to stay connected, active and independent.

[0:49:33] Frances Krumholtz: Yeah, that was incredible. I actually kind of regret my spot in the lineup here but I'll give it a whirl.

[0:49:44] Carol Ventresca: That's a tough one.

[0:49:45] Frances Krumholtz: That's a tough act to follow. Yeah, good for me. In thinking and talking about Nesterly and home sharing, I would like to reiterate that it is a win win. So it is a win for the host who's earning that additional income. It is a win for the guest who's getting that reduced rent, that more flexible kind of lease agreement. Socially it is a win for both of them. But really the community at large also benefits from the intergenerational home sharing. So we know that intergenerational programming reduces ageism. Again, for both older and younger people, we see less ages, less internalized ageism as a result from that intergenerational programming and it can also help reduce aging anxiety. So something that we didn't get to talk to because there's so much to cover in a short period of time. But I think is really invaluable to the work that the villages are doing are this idea of confidence and not having kind of internalized ageist beliefs about yourself has outsized impact on again, both your mental health but also your physical health and well being. And so if Nesterly can be a vehicle for people to get to those intergenerational connections and to kind of reduce that friction of internalized ageism, we just love to see that continue to grow.

[0:51:24] Carol Ventresca: Wonderful. I'd say you did very well.

[0:51:27] Donald Wiggins: I would say that was an excellent response.

[0:51:32] Brett Johnson: Well, thanks to both of you for being a part of the podcast. We really appreciate it. Listeners, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to check out the show notes. Going to have contact information for both our guests resources that we talked about and we'll have the resources on our website looking forward our way way.com and we're looking forward to hearing your feedback on this or any of our podcast episodes.