Centre County Seeking First Applicants for Elder Cottage Program

Centre County is getting ready to offer a program for older adults to have affordable, independent housing while being close to family support.

The county and housing partner the HOME Foundation are seeking the first applicants for the Elder Cottage Housing Opportunity, or ECHO, a program supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency for older residents who need some assistance, but don’t necessarily need a nursing home or senior living community.

“The ECHO housing opportunity is a small temporary cottage for an older adult that is placed in a side or rear yard of a family member,” Quentin Burchfield, director of the Office of Aging, told the county Board of Commissioners on Tuesday.

“It’s a small separate structure, so what’s nice is that the idea of it is that the older adult still has the independence of living on their own, but they are able to live close to family that can help them and care for them,” added Morgan Wasikonis, executive director of the HOME Foundation, which is the sister organization of Housing Transitions.

Seniors and their families interested in applying for the elder cottage can contact the Office of Aging at 814-355-6716. The office will then work with the HOME Foundation to determine if they are a suitable candidate. Individuals living in the cottage must be independent or independent with their family’s assistance.

The manufactured cottage will be ready for use in about a month or two, and Wasikonis said that ideally someone will be living in it by the end of the summer.

Roughly half the length of a single-wide mobile home, the cottage will be 39 feet, 8 inches long and 13 feet, 4 inches wide, with a total area of 529 square feet, according to a floor plan shown to the commissioners. It connects to the host property’s utilities and will have a kitchen and living area, bathroom, bedroom and porch. It will be ADA accessible.

Occupancy can be for one or two people.

Considered affordable, income-based housing, rent is 30% of the cottage resident’s income and no other costs are charged to the resident or host family. Wasikonis said the impact on the host family’s utility bills has been shown to be very small.

The HOME Foundation will be responsible for preparing the site, placing the cottage on the property, connecting utilities, making any necessary adjustments and collecting rent.

“One of the factors that’s a big consideration as the housing partner is the municipality that it will be placed in,” Wasikonis said. “There will probably be some zoning and variance requests and things like that in order to be able to have it be temporarily placed.”

When the resident no longer needs the cottage, the HOME Foundation also will move it to the next accepted applicant or store it if there is no waiting list.

“We really want to have more than one potential family,” Burchfield said. “Once someone is done using it, it would be great to have somebody else lined up to use the structure. If there’s anything that needs to be repaired or renovated [the HOME Foundation] will take care of that before it goes to the next family.”

Pennsylvania’s first ECHO debuted in 2018 in Clearfield County, and the commonwealth has been rolling the program out in phases with the ultimate goal of having at least one elder cottage in every county.

“The idea of it, which was a vision of Diana T. Meyers in the state, was that especially in rural areas, when we think about where we have services for older adults they tend to be in more urban areas,” Wasikonis said. “That’s where the nursing homes and places like that are. This is a way for people to live closer to maybe the home area that they’ve lived in most of their lives and close to family as well… It allows the person who may need some adjustments made to their home to get around in it and be able to have it be accessible, be able to enjoy that without having to make any major changes to either a home that they lived in or the host family’s home.”

Centre County and the HOME Foundation applied for the grant in 2020, but the project was delayed by construction slow-downs and other factors brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are trying to get this moving quickly,” Wasikonis said. “…This was actually applied for before we knew there was going to be a pandemic. So we are anxious to get this moving. Fortunately there is a manufacturer that has already worked with other counties and is able to produce these pretty quickly now.”

In addition to older adults and their families, ECHO also benefits the community, Burchfield said.

“You’re allowing the senior to stay in the community where they’re at, so it’s a benefit to the community, too,” he said. “You may have someone who has been there for generations and instead of going to potentially a personal care home they are able to stay with their family in the community. I think that’s really good value to a family and a community.”