It continues to be an honor being involved with the Congregate Housing Services Program (CHSP). Everyday the Laconia Housing Authority Staff witness the benefits that this program provides our residents and has provided since October 1993.

Our program provides thirty residents with two meals-365 days a year, laundry and housekeeping services weekly, emergency response systems, personal care assistance, and transportation to and from medical appointments. We have served nearly 200 residents since this program began. Today, the average age of the residents that we serve in the CHSP is 80-86.

In 1993 when the program began at Sunrise Towers, many residents had chosen to leave the Public Housing Facility to enter local nursing homes because they were experiencing difficulties with activities of daily living. The CHSP has been marketed in a way that residents desire the benefits of the program. During the past fifteen years residents have witnessed how the CHSP has provided much needed services to their friends and neighbors allowing them the opportunity to age in place, in their own private apartments surrounded by items that reflect their personal histories.

This program provides services on a daily basis which ultimately provides the residents another option to early nursing home placement. This program has saved millions of tax dollars in our community; we can only imagine the dollars saved around the country during these past thirty years.

One of the first residents approved for the program in October of 1993, was considering nursing home placement because it was difficult for her five daughters (living in different parts of the state) to meet all her needs. Each daughter had become responsible for the mother's needs: One daughter was responsible for grocery shopping, another for financial matters, and another for housekeeping and laundry, another for transportation to medical appointments etc. When she joined the Congregate Housing Services Program she became healthier, and her daughters could come and visit and enjoy quality time with their mother. She lived at our facilities for ten years. This woman loved every moment that she received Congregate Housing Services. If she had chosen to enter the local county nursing home the cost to provide care for this woman would have funded Congregate Housing Services for thirty individuals in our facility for five years.

Laconia Housing Authority
25 Union Avenue
Laconia, NH 03246
(603) 524-2112