The Best Continuing Care Retirement Communities Communities in Santa Barbara County, CA

"I have chosen Atterdag Village of Solvang for my husband. It is five minutes from my house, so I felt that was an asset. They were helpful. They are starting up a daycare program, which will take some of the burden off of me until the room is available to him. I haven't talked to my husband, so one of the nice things is they said that they would come to my house and help me talk to him. They have a one-bedroom, which is nice. It seems satisfactory to me. it's a continuing care community. The facility is very well maintained. They have an indoor pool. It is just a nice environment. They have been very nice. I've had some problems, and they helped me solve them (like opening up their daycare program). It's Monday through Friday from 9:00 in the morning till 5:00 at night. I spoke directly to the administrator, and it sounded like they had lots of activities. They had a daycare program, but they had to shut it down, of course during COVID. My husband is going to be in a memory care unit, but I have some good friends that live in the independent living quarters. They are very nice. They keep them pretty busy. They go on outings. Even the memory care people I know go on outings. They don't let them off the bus, but they take them for drives and touring the beauty of Solvang area. They're very nice. You furnish them the way you want in the independent living, which is nice. They take wonderful care of my friend, who has been there for a couple of years. I felt that with the Covid, they just took fabulous care of them. There were no cases of Covid. My friend said the food is good. They used to go down to L.A. for concerts, Broadway shows, and stuff like that. I would go with them on a bus. They had buses, and it was great. I was allowed to go if they had extra room, and that worked out great. They have a physical fitness center and a swimming pool. They do tai chi and things like that. It seems pretty well served."

"We toured Valle Verde Assisted Living. The rooms were fine, but it won't work out for what we need. They were clean and adequate, nothing special, it was just like a bedroom that opens up into a living room. I saw their rec room and they were keeping everyone busy. The staff-members were all very congenial and helpful. The residents could order off of the menu and there were selections for meals in the dining room"

"We went to Covenant Living at the Samarkand. The grounds were absolutely delightful. You felt like you were living in a park. Things opened up to beautiful landscaping, and the pool was lovely. It had a sense of being quite lively. There was a lot of activity going on outside, and it seemed very friendly and very warm. The staff person who showed us around was a delight. We love the history of the place. It had actually been a hotel at one point, and it had sort of the architectural bones of the old Spanish style hotel. It was easy to get to from the freeway. It's very close to a main street in Santa Barbara, which was nice. We liked it very much except for two things. One is that the units we saw just seemed quite cramped. I realize that in Santa Barbara you do a lot of outdoor living, but the living room/dining area in the unit felt sort of like my grandmother's assisted living. It didn't feel like independent living. It was kind of a downer for me. I'm waiting to see if they had some bigger apartments. As you're wandering around, you don't have the feeling that a religious based organization owns the place. However, all of their vehicles have giant lettering that say Covenant (which on the West Coast sounds very conservative theological), and it's not sort of our direction. It felt a little strange to us. They had a big place for services. One side was sort of the synagogue side; the other side was kind of the nondenominational Christian side. Everything was very definitely resident driven. The staff mentioned, "We're getting a lot of people who want to sew. We're going to have to make some space for the quilters." I love that; that's exactly what you want to hear. The rooms were just too small. They felt cramped, and their kitchens were quite small. Their accommodations were not that good, but the grounds were stunning. I love the park and the way it was designed. I loved the landscape architecture of the place, including the actual architecture of the building and their layout for the residents. If you were single, it might be very different. It was cramped for a couple."

"I've got some friends who live in Casa Dorinda. It's a very high-end, beautiful, but quite expensive place. That's the top-of-the-line, incredible food, and beautiful architecture. Everything about that place is excellent. The staff was very attentive, polite, and delightful. The food is excellent, and even their cappuccinos are good. I noticed they were having an exercise class, they had lots of activities, and took different buses to different places."