Why families start here
Most families begin looking for senior living in a hurry. A fall, a hospital stay, a worrying phone call or a doctor's warning turns "someday" into "this month". Within a few hours of searching online, many families have typed their phone number into a form and started getting calls from people they never meant to contact, each one pushing a different community.
We built Our Folks New Place to be the opposite of that. This site exists to help you understand your choices calmly, in plain English, before you talk to anyone who is selling something. Our guides explain what each kind of care really includes, what it usually costs, what Medicare does and does not pay for, and which questions separate a good fit from a costly mistake. Our city pages bring that down to street level for 131 cities across secondary markets nationwide, with the local hospitals, county programs and aging agencies a family will actually deal with.
How we're different
One advisor, not a bullpen. When you call the number on one of our city pages, you speak with one dedicated local advisor for that city. You won't be passed down a chain of sales teams, and your phone won't start ringing with calls from places you've never heard of.
Your details stay with us. Your family's contact information is never sold, auctioned, or distributed to sales bullpens. If it helps you, we may introduce you to one senior living community in your chosen city. One, not twenty.
No invented praise. You won't find star ratings, awards or glowing testimonials on this site. We don't publish reviews we can't stand behind, and we don't use stock photos of smiling strangers in dining rooms. Unless a community has signed on as our featured partner and supplied original photographs we've confirmed, our city pages show simple maps instead of pictures.
Sources you can check. Every city-specific fact links to the public source it came from, with the date we checked it. Cost figures name the survey they come from and say plainly that they are statewide medians, not quotes.
The three kinds of senior living we cover
Senior living is not one thing. The right setting depends on how much help with daily life your parent, spouse or relative needs now, and how much they are likely to need over the next few years.
Independent living is for older adults who manage their own daily care but want less house to look after, fewer chores and more company. Meals, housekeeping, transportation and activities are offered as conveniences. Our independent living guide explains how it differs from a retirement subdivision, what monthly fees usually include, and when it stops being enough.
Assisted living adds hands-on help with everyday tasks such as bathing, dressing, managing medications and getting to meals, while residents keep their own apartment or room. Our assisted living guide covers the assessment that sets a resident's care level, how care charges are added to rent, and why the move-in contract deserves a slow, careful read.
Memory care serves people living with Alzheimer's disease or another dementia. It combines secured surroundings with structured days and staff who work with dementia every day. Our memory care guide covers the signs that home is no longer safe, how to judge a memory care neighborhood on a tour, and what changes as the disease progresses.
131 cities, each with its own realities
Families in our 131 cities, from Sacramento and Reno to Fairbanks, Cape Cod and the Mississippi Delta, face different questions. Central Valley summers bring long runs of triple-digit heat. Reno's high desert brings big swings between day and night and more than a hundred freeze-thaw cycles a year. Boise and Spokane winters bring snow and dozens of freeze-thaw cycles a year. Bismarck winters are colder still, river towns such as Huntington, Binghamton and Owensboro live with flood history, and Hattiesburg and Tupelo sit in tornado country. Each state runs its own oversight system and its own aging programs, and each city has its own hospitals that shape where families want to be.
Each city page explains the local care landscape, gives a tour checklist written for that city's climate, names the county programs and Area Agency on Aging that can help, shows statewide cost medians, and explains where to read the state's own records on any community you're considering.
How to use this site
- Read the guide for the kind of care you think fits. If you're not sure, start with assisted living; it explains where the other two begin and end.
- Open your city page. Note the local agencies, the climate questions to ask on tours, and the statewide cost range.
- Look up the state's public records for any community you're considering, using the links in the directory disclaimer at the bottom of every page.
- Ask for a callback when you're ready. Tell us your city and timeframe, and one advisor will call you back. There is no cost to families for using this site or for talking with an advisor.
A word about pressure
Moving a parent is one of the hardest things a family does, and there are people who profit from that urgency. A good decision rarely has to be made on the first call. Ask for the full contract in advance, ask for the most recent rate sheet in writing, visit at least twice at different times of day, and give the person who will live there as much say as possible. If anyone tells you a room will be gone tomorrow unless you sign today, slow down.
