Letter to the Editor: Let’s make it easier for older adults to live near family

As a parent, there are days when it is hard to remember life before children. Then — as they ask us for the car keys — it seems like, only moments ago, we were putting them on the school bus for the first time. When our children leave home, we think, “Now, it’s our time.”

Then — often all too quickly — many of us face the reality of supporting aging parents.

A few weeks before my high school graduation, my parents signed me out of school. My grandfather had just passed away. Over the following decades, my parents did their best to help my grandmother stay independent in her home. They took in my aunt and finally moved into her house themselves to care for both in their final years.

This is what families do. We manage. Sadly, for many, the golden years aren’t always golden. All too often, our parents face the prospect of institutional care, a process that can bleed off their life savings and strip them of their assets and their dignity. This process can be a labyrinth of asset limits, estate recovery programs and lookback rules that can consume everything a person has worked a lifetime to build. All of this, so our aging family members can languish alone in assisted living centers or nursing homes.

In seven years, around one-third of Delaware’s population will be 60 or older. There are land use rules against mother-in-law apartments, duplexes or cluster housing and other housing types that are more suitable to older people than traditional single-family homes. Aging parents want to stay close to their children and grandchildren. They want to remain close to friends and neighbors, to familiar places. They want to be independent. They don’t want to be warehoused nor do they want to lose their property and possessions.

Those of us who have living parents or grandparents are likely to face this situation. Government should not make it harder to keep families together. This is why I am working on an ordinance to give every property owner the right to build an additional living unit. We should allow people with a single-family home to build an addition to create an apartment, flat or other living space.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. It’s how America worked when local government had far fewer rules.

The proposed law doesn’t require anyone to do anything. It simply gives a homeowner the right to add an accessory dwelling unit to an existing structure. This would increase Kent County’s housing stock. It would make housing more affordable by adding to the supply. It would put growth exactly where homes are now, without any new subdivisions, roads or infrastructure.

From personal experience, I know how hard it can be to care for aging family members. At the Kent County Levy Court, we should act to create more options and give our parents and grandparents a chance to grow old close to family and friends.

Jeffrey W. Hall

Commissioner, Kent County Levy Court 2nd District