This is the twenty-third in a series of articles intended to demystify living in a retirement community.

A stately brick building overlooking the city of Prescott, AZ from the top of a hill just south of downtown is the Arizona Pioneers’ Home. For long-time Arizona residents in good health but of limited means who are seeking a new place to live, it can provide a satisfying alternative to other options for senior housing and care. It has space for about 155 residents and currently houses 97.

Established by statute more than a hundred years ago -- when Arizona was still a territory – the Pioneers’ Home is an unusual institution.

Created to provide housing and care for people who contributed to Arizona’s development and who don’t have a lot of money, it generally accepts only residents who have lived in Arizona for at least fifty years and who are over the age of seventy.

When they enter, residents must be able to walk and to manage without assistance typical activities of daily living such as dressing, bathing, eating and so forth. They do not need to be able to prepare food, as all meals and snacks are provided, and their accommodations do not include individual kitchens.

If their health deteriorates after they have become residents, in almost all cases the Pioneers’ Home will continue to take care of them for the rest of their lives.

It also offers cemetery plots in its own cemetery, at no charge to residents.

A few residents enter the Arizona Pioneers’ Home under a disabled miners program, for Arizona miners who are either poor or whose health was damaged by their work in Arizona mines. Those applicants need be only sixty years old, and they may enter with health issues. Disabled miners are not required to pay for their housing or standard care.

The state ends up contributing about $5 million a year to the operation of the Pioneers’ Home, and about another $1 million comes from residents.

Residents are not charged any kind of admission fee or up-front lump sum when they move in, although such charges are common in other communities that commit to providing life-long housing and medical care.

Pioneers, as residents other than miners are termed, must reimburse the state for as much of the cost of their care, currently $4,702 a month, as possible. Residents may keep $200 a month for personal expenses. Someone with total income of $250 a month would pay just $50. Someone with total income of $20,000 a month would pay $4,702.

However, people who can afford to pay a significant portion of the full amount -- more than $56,000 a year -- are likely to consider other options. For example, the base rate for assisted living in an apartment at Granite Gate with about four times the space is roughly $30,000 a year.

Residents are required to have Medicare coverage as well as to maintain a Medigap policy to help with medical expenses not covered by Medicare. (They can keep money from their income to pay the premiums, in addition to keeping $200 for other expenses.)

Applicants are encouraged to have all known medical, dental, and eye care needs addressed before they move in. The Pioneers’ Home typically will not cover pre-existing conditions unless Medicare pays for them.

What do residents do if they need or want care that is not covered, when they can keep only $200/month in income? In some cases their children may provide the money, or they may draw on their own financial reserves.

Unlike the case with Medicaid, residents are not required to spend down their assets to be eligible to move in to the Arizona Pioneers’ Home. For example, if they have investments totaling $100,000 that pay dividends of $3000 a year, that income averages out to $250/month and that $250 would be counted in their monthly income.

However, they are not required to turn in the $100,000 in assets in this example. They may keep or use that money as they like, whether it is for medical care, travel, clothing, or whatever else they choose.

The next column will describe the accommodations and other features of the Arizona Pioneers’ Home.

-- Next -- 104. Arizona Pioneers' Home: Accommodations and Features