Longhouse creates smaller, “human scale” communities for seniors that combine the comforts of a real home with comprehensive Alzheimer's and dementia memory care services. We believe that in senior living, smaller is better.

The word “Longhouse” is derived from the communal dwellings that represent the earliest form of human habitation in a permanent structure. The name underscores that living in small, communal dwellings is the natural inclination of human beings and should be honored. Matthew Long, the founder of Longhouse^®, grew up in the jungles of Borneo and witnessed the Dyaks using the Longhouse firsthand. He has adopted the name as a clarion call for smaller “human scale” communities for seniors.

Longhouse is sponsored by Husky Senior Care, a Seattle-based in-home care company that was founded to serve the Alumni of all colleges and universities. The Longhouse Adult Family Homes caregivers, communication model, and operation appeal to discerning seniors and their families who demand superior service and outcomes.

Families often move a parent into assisted living because Mom is isolated in her home. They desire socialization. But that is not what they get with assisted living. We estimate that 80% of seniors who move into assisted living spend most of their day alone in their apartments. Despite the best intention of activity programs, there is just no way to overcome a lifetime of associations that connect safety with home, or social ease with a small group of familiar faces. After all, most of us did not grow up in a hotel. We don’t have the social capacity to face 150 people at meal times. And how familiar can things be when you have to walk 75 yards and go around 10 corners to visit the library or the living room? It is impossible to replicate a home-like feeling of safety, comfort, and control in a community that houses 150 people.

This reality is that the sheer size of today’s assisted living communities present an implacable problem: most seniors don’t want to live in them because they’re too big and complicated. And those with cognitive and physical limitations are incapacitated by them.

Longhouse Adult Family Homes are different.  The small size of a Longhouse Memory Care Household or Adult Family Home allows for a different social model. The Longhouse^® emphasizes the home model in which most of a person’s time is spent in the familiar settings of a living room, dining room, library, porch, or garden (and this is what we call them). Bedrooms are for sleeping, personal hygiene, napping, dressing, and quiet moments.

In our experience, many senior housing facilities do not include the basic things that make life pleasant for us all, such as fresh air, natural light, trees and greenery, tranquility, the sound of birds, the sound of flowing water, access to earth and gardens, and the love of a family pet.

In many ways, this oversight has resulted from the rush to exaggerate the differences between the elderly and everyone else. Longhouse Memory Care Households and Adult Family Homes goes to great lengths to normalize the approach to design and generously supply the “common” things that make our lives pleasant.