Front Porch Communities and Services is gearing up for continued growth of its senior living business, including by expanding its memory care offerings in 2025 and beyond.
In 2022, Front Porch merged with Covia Communities under the Front Porch banner. The Glendale, California-based organization also hired new CEO Sean Kelly, who took over in early 2023 from The Kendal Corp. where he served as president and CEO since 2016.
Since joining the organization, Kelly has spearheaded a four-pronged effort that focuses on improving workplace culture and resident engagement, fostering leadership development, emphasis on operational performance and positioning the organization for future growth.
The company is preparing to build a new community, Los Gatos Meadows, in Los Gatos, California after closing operations in the area in 2019. The latest development is set to be a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) with designing for the future in mind. Other growth includes new memory care additions at existing communities, along with new technology partnerships to improve memory care services, along with caregiver training for families and staff.
Front Porch is also in the midst of growing a partnership with artificial intelligence and virtual reality tech company Embodied Labs to bring more immersive programming to people living with dementia and cognitive decline.
Training for caregivers and family caregivers has also taken a central part of Front Porch’s recent efforts to improve memory care, having trained over 10,000 caregivers in 2024 alone, Kelly said.
Front Porch additionally continues to also expand its Center for Innovation and Wellbeing, a pilot program that allows communities to try out new tools to aid in operations, including new technology or new equipment aimed at improving resident health and welfare.
“It enables us to take new ideas, leverage the new technologies that are out there, build on them, discover things that work and then spread the things that work best across the whole organization,” Kelly told Memory Care Business.
Front Porch currently operates 18 senior living communities in California and one in Florida, spanning active adult, independent living, assisted living and memory care. The nonprofit senior living provider also has 32 affordable senior housing communities, with all but one being located in California.
Front Porch growing memory care to meet demand
Many senior living operators have downsized or overhauled skilled nursing units in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic, and Front Porch is no different. The company undertook multiple conversions in recent years to expand memory care services and downsize skilled nursing across its portfolio.
Front Porch’s memory care program, known as Summer House, aims to bring outdoor spaces indoors and provide programming for residents that can help increase socialization and connect residents.
“Summer House has been a movement to invest in the environments that induce price, enable a dignified and fully human experience, while at the same time recognizing the very special needs that individuals at different stages of the memory care journey can have,” Kelly said.
Front Porch opened a new memory care neighborhood at its Walnut Village community in Anaheim, California, adding 29 private apartments and one companion suite with private bathrooms and large windows. Shared amenities include a dining room, activity room, sensory room with technology to support resident wellness, along with a theater and sunlit protected courtyard.
A similar concept for an expanded memory care neighborhood was also added at the Fredericka Manor community in Chula Vista, California. The addition brought 22 new cottage-style homes as part of the original 22 homes built on the property that were allocated for memory care when the community first opened in 2015.
“We bookended the year of 2024 with two new communities and we expect more to come,” Kelly said. “We’ve got a gameplan and a framework for how we think we can do our best work.”
Another memory care addition is planned in Carlsbad, California that’s currently under construction and Kelly said it’s possible the nonprofit senior living provider expands memory care offerings at its market-rate communities.
Through its partnership with Embodied Labs, Front Porch has included sensory rooms across its new Summer House memory care additions, allowing for residents to interact with immersive experiences from the comfort and safety of their community.
“Those are the kinds of investments that we’re making that are born of the data that’s been produced from trying things on proving the things that work best and when they work best, we want to do them over and over again,” Kelly said.
Moving forward, Kelly said memory care providers across the industry must “focus on the totality of the human experience” for residents living with cognitive decline, and creating experiences that help them lead fulfilled lives as they live with cognitive decline.
Preparing for the future through affordability, other efforts
To cut through some of the affordability challenges in memory care, Kelly views training family caregivers as an important step in meeting people where they are, regardless of whether or not they live in a Front Porch community. This comes as Kelly sees a growing need for more affordable senior housing options for older adults without the financial means to move into a market-rate community.
“We have to be able to develop middle market housing that is accessible to the large body of folks that aren’t going to be subsidized or wealthy enough to make every choice that they might want to make,” Kelly said. “We also have to accompany that housing with real services and programs.”
To sustain new growth for Front Porch, the organization has created a development planning and capital management division to centralize master planning and coordinate growth, Kelly noted. What the company has learned is that more often than not, new customers and prospects want more memory care options and independent living units, along with greater access to services and amenities.
“We also expect to partner with other organizations that can provide for home and community based service programs,” Kelly added.
Another area of growth for Front Porch could be including the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) services at its affordable communities to improve services.
Looking into the future, Kelly remains bullish on the state of senior living, but cautioned that affordability and the intense and more complex operating environment could pose significant challenges for the industry for years to come.
“I think the work is getting harder but I think we are beginning to see our purpose differently in a way that holds up what it is to become older in this world and it’s for that reason that I am excited,” Kelly said.