This article first appeared in the June/July 2015 issue of Organic Hudson Valley.

People with elderly relatives in need of care face many challenges, both logistical and emotional, especially for those whose relatives need higher levels of care, sometimes requiring a nursing home, something most elderly people fear. Bob Novak is trying to change all of that with Echo Cottages, a concept that began when his father was facing a need for a higher level of care.

Echo Cottages provide an alternative means of housing elderly or ill relatives by placing small, portable cottages in your yard, where you can be closer to your relative, and they can still maintain a feeling of independence.

The cottages that are placed on your property are rented. These cottages are the size of a very comfortable one-bedroom apartment, with a living room-kitchen area, and a large bathroom off of the bedroom. There are a lot of windows, so the cottages are bright and airy in the good weather and well insulated for the winter.

Echo Cottages will take their time to offer customization and include touches such as crown molding and nice trim around the windows. “You can fit a queen size bed in there,” Novak said. “The bathroom has a shower big enough to fit a wheelchair, and there’s a washer and dryer, dishwasher, cooktop convention oven and a sink.” Another great advantage to these cottages is that pets are allowed. Novak’s intention is to keep the bond between the pet and the owner instead of breaking them apart, if that elderly or ill person was placed in a nursing home.

“A lot of people don’t want to live with their kids or the kids don’t want their parents to live with them,” Novak said. Renting an Echo Cottage is a much more affordable alternative to a nursing home, which is costly and can run from $7,000 to $10,000 a month. Echo Cottages costs $1300 a month, which is a significant difference. Novak believes that the savings allows people to hire the outside care that may be needed to care for their loved ones.

Echco Cottages are a new sustainable way of living, which is very beneficial to all. “If you build a facility, let’s say a 100-bed nursing home facility, you’re going to build a tremendous building infrastructure, blacktop, maintenance, sewage, drainage. If you put 100 of Echo Cottages in a town, in everybody’s backyard, you’ve got no infrastructure whatsoever,” Novak said. “Echo Cottages is temporary and removed when they are not needed anymore.”

Unfortunately, trying to implement this concept has been very challenging. Each town requires you to go through a special use permit, plan approval, and financing, which means it takes three to four months to get through the approval process. This can be an issue when we get news that the doctor says your mother or father can’t live alone anymore.
“We think this is the best way to care for your elderly loved ones and hope it will catch on quickly,” Novak said.

Echo Cottages gives us a more sustainable choice when it comes to thinking about where our elderly loved ones will live.

For more information about Echo Cottages, visit http://www.echocottages.com or call 1-877-949-3246.