Over the summer, housemates Thelma and Dave enjoyed distanced, masked socializing on their patio with family members.While many other residents of elder-care homes found themselves confined to their rooms by COVID-19, the ones at Jamie’s Place could continue enjoying many of the small pleasures that bolster well-being and bring meaning to daily life.

Jamie’s Place is one of 300 homes across the U.S. that are part of the Green House Project, an innovative model for residential care. Green House Project homes house small groups of elders in non-institutional spaces staffed by specially trained “universal workers” known as Shahbazim. Though they aren’t new—GHP and other “small house” elder homes have existed since 2003—they have garnered attention recently for having deftly weathered the pandemic.

From January through June, GHP homes have reported only 32.5 confirmed cases per thousand residents as compared to 146 cases per thousand residents in all certified skilled nursing homes. As GHP senior director Susan Ryan explains, the very scale and design factors that helped Green House homes lower COVID rates also enabled staff to “get far more creative” in reacting to the pandemic.

The nonprofit Green House Project was founded by Dr. Bill Thomas, a Harvard-educated geriatrician who recognized a need to humanize the often sterile environment of traditional nursing homes. Long, monotonous corridors with identical doors are a wayfinding nightmare for dementia sufferers, who rely heavily on cues in their immediate environment, for instance. Visiting facilities across the country in the 1990s that were “aging more quickly than the people living in them,” Dr. Thomas realized that the care reform he envisioned required a radically different architectural form—one that would create an optimal environment for nurturing resident elders and staff, the way a greenhouse nurtures plants. Pilot Green Houses were built in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 2003, with a replication initiative beginning soon after.

Read the full article about nursing homes that feel like home help avoid Covid by Lily Bernheimer at YES! Magazine.