SECOND WAY · SHARED LIVING
La Casa
A large house in Cali for twelve to eighteen older people. Private room, shared table, courtyard. The size of a big family, not of a two-hundred-bed institution.
Anyone already with us at home arrives already knowing the team. La Casa isn't another service: it's the same one, somewhere else.
How many people per caregiver
1 for every 4
At La Casa
1 for every 15 or 20
At a two-hundred-bed institution
Twelve to eighteen residents is the size of this house: the number at which you still know how each person slept and who didn't feel like breakfast.
A day at La Casa
MORNING — Breakfast at the shared table, whenever each person gets up. Someone talking loudly in the kitchen.
MIDDAY — Lunch cooked in the house; you can smell it from the courtyard. Then a nap, or the radio.
AFTERNOON — The day's workshop: dancing, music, painting or the vegetable patch. A turn around the courtyard on someone's arm. Family turns up unannounced.
EVENING — A light meal, talking in the living room, and someone awake in the house all night.
Who's in the house
BY DAY — Caregivers on eight-hour shifts and the person who runs the house. There is always someone in the living room and someone in the kitchen.
BY NIGHT — One person awake all night, with the family's numbers and the health provider's to hand.
MEDICATION — Given by the staff on shift, including at night, following each resident's prescription, with every dose written down.
WE DON'T REPLACE — The doctor or the health system. Appointments, tests and medical decisions stay with the treating doctor and the family.
Dancing, music, painting and the vegetable patch are part of life in the house. They are not an add-on package or a higher tier: they're for every resident, every day, whatever their level of independence.
- Dancing
- Music
- Painting
- Vegetable patch
included at every level
There are no published rates yet. But we can tell you what they'll depend on, so there are no surprises: on three things, and nothing else.
How much help she needs
Day to day: walking, bathing, eating, finding her way. We assess it with the family before she moves in, and review it every six months.
The room
Every room is private. The difference is the bathroom: in the room, or shared with one neighbour down the hall.
Outside services, à la carte
Accompanied outings, physiotherapy, hairdresser. Asked for when you want them, charged one by one.
The activities in the house are not part of that calculation. They're always included.
The house doesn't exist yet: we're looking for it. In the meantime we'll describe it in words, so you know what it's going to be and what we refuse to let it become.
What it will be
- a neighbourhood house in Cali, single-storey or with a lift
- twelve to eighteen residents, no more
- a private room for each person, with their own furniture if they want to bring it
- a courtyard with sun and soil to plant in
- a kitchen where food is actually cooked and the place smells of it
- doors open to family at any hour
- staff on written contracts and eight-hour days
- someone awake all night
What we refuse to let it become
- a corridor of rooms with the television on all day
- a place with visiting hours
- a house that grows to forty or a hundred beds because "the numbers work better"
- chairs in a row facing the wall
- the smell of disinfectant instead of the smell of lunch
- twelve-hour shifts for the staff
- somewhere families leave feeling guilty
If either of those lists looks wrong to you, write and say so. There's still time to change it.
About the place and the date
We open sometime in 2027. We're not announcing the neighbourhood or the exact date yet, because we're still choosing the house, and we don't want to promise an address that then changes. Anyone who leaves their details hears first.
Tell me when it opens