An Assisted Living Community Environment That Optimizes Function: Housing Enabler Assessment

Aspects of the physical and temporal environment can optimize and preserve function, or they can impede if not imperil it. Older adults have a temporal relationship to their environment with regard to their present and future needs, the influence of the environment on their sense of well-being, their ability to adapt to age-related changes and chronic illness, and the types of positive or adaptive responses that the environment can facilitate. Because older individuals differ in motivation and cognitive and physical abilities, they differentially use features in their environment to support their wishes and activities—that is, they use them to further their quality of life. Lawton’s ecological theory of aging model defines the individual as a set of competencies; the environment is defined as demands (ie, internal/endogenous; external/exogenous).