Uplands Village

We've been members of Uplands for 18 years. We knew people living here, and that's how we knew about it. This community has individual homes. We have a lease on the property, and we built a house. When we leave, they will try to sell the house, and we get so much for it; that's the way it operates. We can be anything we want to be. We're free to go and do as we please. We're still mobile, and if we want to go somewhere, we go. We cook our own food, do our own shopping, and do our own laundry. We have a lady who comes in and cleans twice a week. We do have a yard. There is a 24-hour nursing service if we need it. The staff are very helpful, and we get along with people very well. There is just a little bit of dissatisfaction amongst ourselves in the way things have developed over the years -- the policies and the atmosphere created by new management. They have made some changes that we do not like, and they have increased our monthly rate.

It is called Upland Village at Pleasant Hill. We were connected to a mutual friend who was here. It was a boarding school for local kids for a number of years that eventually morphed into a continuing care community. It has three levels. There are independent houses that are scattered in the village. We are roughly half of the population of the small village. Most of our members lived in the independent houses. We do have an assisted living facility and nursing home facility. My wife and I are in the independent houses. We have so many activities that I'm frustrated that we never have time for ourselves. The reason my wife is not here is because she's off to an activity playing her drums with another resident who is playing the piano for the assisted living dinner time entertainment. There is an exercise program called Flex and Stretch. There is a musical ensemble where members play in a group. There is a play reading group, a bridge group, and a program called Shalom that brings outside speakers. The staff is one of the things to recommend about this place. The staff is devoted, excellent, very warm, and caring. The memberships are very warm and caring as well. The independent houses are divided into neighborhoods with typically six to eight houses in each. Everybody takes care of each other, so if somebody is ill or has a problem, everybody helps out.

Uplands Village has a relatively simple lifestyle. The rooms are spacious and well-maintained. We've lived in a private housing here in the village for about 27 years and have just moved into the assisted living part in January. The staff members are very caring and concerned about us as individuals. My husband has rather serious food limitations, and sometimes they remind us of things he shouldn't be eating that we don't realize. So they are very, very caring, and they work very hard at following the doctor's rules about what he should or shouldn't have to eat, and we appreciate that a lot. Everybody here looks after everybody. It is a very, very caring community. There are concerts and movies twice a week, and there is a Bridge club, a dulcimer group, and a community band of people who haven't played since they were in high school or college and are doing concerts now because they again work so hard on it. Then, there is story hour, and we have a couple of different, or at least two or more, reading groups and music groups, and lots and lots and lots of volunteer work. There is an elementary school across the street from us, and a lot of people volunteer over there with tutoring or helping with music or the library things and so on. And, there are four big sales run by volunteers every year to benefit the people in the community or offer scholarships for staff people or their children on whatever they'll need or want while schooling, and also to help people whose money runs out. We have been happy with each different place within the 25 years, and this is the fourth or fifth place we've lived according to what our needs were at the time within the facility. But one thing, this is a rural setting, and so that makes the difference. Both of us are rural people, and some people might think that it is not big city enough, but we have hospitals and everything within relatively close distance across the street.