This post, in slightly different form, was presented as a report to the Kendal Residents Association on April 14, 2025.

On March 11, I attended the CCRC Area Council meeting at White Horse Village. Kendal is one of 14 CCRCs that are members of this council, and the hosting of these meetings is rotated among the member campuses.

These are always interesting gatherings, where you meet residents of the other Council communities and learn about how things are done where they live, and I found this meeting to be particularly interesting.

Dealing with a bank closure. For me, the highlight of this visit was a presentation by White Horse resident Tom Stratton about the response of White Horse Village when their bank, Bryn Mawr Trust, closed their on-premises branch office. The bank had gradually reduced hours until it finally closed the branch, apparently because it was uneconomical to keep it staffed. White Horse went looking for a replacement bank, approaching five others with local operations, but none wanted the business.

This situation caused a crisis for residents. The most pressing issue was that some residents had no way to cash checks, short of taking the White Horse bus to another branch office—but even that wasn’t possible for some.

A group of residents decided to form their own check-cashing service, called the “Currency Service”. There were many hurdles to overcome, but eventually they were able to offer a lunchtime service, two days a week, staffed by resident volunteers. They set up a bank account (to deposit checks they received) and acquired a small safe to store currency. The resident association provided $10,000 in working capital for the operation, which is run entirely by residents.

In addition to cashing checks, the service provides change, both for residents and for the café and the gift shop.

The service has been in operation for 3 years and is considered a great success. Though they work hard at making sure change is accurately counted, there are occasional small errors. After 3 years, those errors have resulted in the service actually being in the black by $13.15.

They have only had one check bounce: the children of one resident opened a new account for her and closed her old one, but one day she mistakenly used one of the old checks. The problem was swiftly resolved.

Other items of interest. In addition to the story of that check-cashing service, here are a few other interesting tidbits from the Council meeting:

  • Using Uber for hard-to-schedule trips. White Horse Village has a corporate Uber account, and residents can get Uber rides for trips that would otherwise be difficult to schedule: a ride home after a nighttime release from the hospital, for example, or a ride home from the airport. Some rides are free, and for others, the resident gets a fee on their monthly bill. I believe the possibility of such an arrangement is being discussed here at Kendal-Crosslands.
  • Do they have a backup generator? Most of the Council CCRCs have whole campus backup generators, like we do. But at least five have generators only for the healthcare areas, which means that those in independent living experience blackouts from time to time. (It may also mean that the healthcare area gets a surge of visitors when the rest of the power is out.)
  • Can you bring your own containers for take-out? Some of the CCRCs permit (or even encourage) residents to bring their own reuseable containers for takeout food. Others (like KCC) do not permit that.

Between the quarterly meetings, the Council also conducts “pop-up surveys”—single-question surveys done by email.

Meal plans. One question which recently appeared in these surveys is: what meal plans do you have? Some have a monthly dollar allocation for meals, which you can use as you like. Some have a “points” system that works similarly. There is at least one other CCRC (Freedom Village) that uses a system similar to ours. They offer a choice of either one meal a day or a 21-day plan. They also have a la carte pricing. Most of the CCRCs have a way for residents to check the amount remaining in their meal plan, either on a website or on their phones.

If these discussions sound interesting to you, you might want to attend one of these meetings. The next meeting of the Council will be June 10, at Lima Estates. I can bring two guests. If you would like to go, please let me know.