Forest Glen - Carol Stream, IL

Dwight

We are in Forest Glen - Carol Stream, IL, a 55+ retirement community of townhomes. Most of the townhouses have elevators in them and are all three stories. We have a basement, but some don't, and bedrooms are on the first floor, which is very good for older people. My wife is a gardener, and she's able to have a little garden outside our unit and a nice patio. People are friendly, and they have get-togethers once a month at different restaurants, just to meet each other. We have a gazebo where people come on Saturday from 2 to 4 o'clock and just have an interaction with each other. You can be into living there with everybody, or you can be very independent and just have your own life. We really enjoy our time here. I'm an artist, and I have my studio in the basement, which is very nice. They don't serve any meals. We are very independent, so we cook our own dinners, or we go out. It's very close to a lot of different stores and things that are great when you get older. You can walk to them. It's an association, so it's operated by a board of directors, and it depends on who's on the board of what gets done. It's all these communities that have a lot of rules and stuff; that's the only thing that we find difficult. But once you know what the rules are, then you know what you're allowed to do. They don't really have a staff. They have a board that's elected from the residents that are there and they serve for two years and they kind of go between the community and the people who own because everything is done for us as far as lawn mowing, trimming the bushes, and making the community pristine like it started like putting on a new roof, changing the gutters, doing those things that you would do after building your own home. They listened to us, and they take very good care of the place so it always looks very nice. I think it's an excellent value because since we've lived here, we've appreciated the value in our unit. If we went to sell it, we would sell it for almost twice as much as what we bought it for, so it's a very good investment.