Rudy P. Friesen
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When I became an architect more than fifty years ago, I never dreamed that I'd become passionate about better housing and care for older adults. I was happily designing schools, hospitals, churches, and commercial buildings when three things happened. My mother was placed in a care facility, and it became personal. Then a client challenged me to create a care facility without the conventional corridors or "horridors" of the institutional/hospital model. The scales fell off my eyes and it became professional. A few years later, my firm designed one of the first long-term care facilities in Canada based on the household model. The results were staggering--the need to control people with drugs dropped by two-thirds. Then it became missional. That was more than 20 years ago.
Housing and care for older adults keeps evolving both quickly and slowly. Since retiring from the design business, I've been researching best practices and leading edge facilities around the world--reading about them and visiting them. I've written numerous articles and op-eds, some of which are on this site. I've worked on a national task force for age-friendly housing and on two boards of facilities for older adults. I've taught courses and made presentations to organizations, communities, conferences, and universities in Canada, the US, and Korea. And I've provided consultation to leaders and changemakers. I am based in Nanaimo, BC, on the unceded, ancestral territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. And I continue to devote my time and energy to speaking and writing about transforming long term care. Yes, there are higher quality and less costly ways of housing and caring for older adults. That's why I advocate for pansystemic change. 
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