The Christian Science Monitor

Cooperative communities keep Spanish seniors cared for

Felipe Morales (l.) and Conchi Llanos are part of the founding team of an urban senior co-housing project in its initial stages in the northern city of Bilbao, Spain.

Like most sons, Nemesio Rasillo Oliver loved his mother. He cared for her over the last eight years of her life. But that experience filled him with dread about where he would live out his own old age and, more pressingly, whom he would burden.

So Mr. Rasillo, a retiree and father of four, scoured the internet and there he came across a good idea: a group of friends in the south of Spain had founded a cooperative housing project so that they could care for one another into their old age. Rasillo began dreaming of a similar setup near his home in northern Spain that would keep him out of a

Crunch timeLike 'visiting college dorms'

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