Peter Badgley and Jake Rothstein founded start-up company Upside two years ago, billing the firm as a “new category of senior living.”
“We thought it was a really positive name, thinking about the upside of getting older. We really wanted a positive-sounding name,” Rothstein told the McKnight’s Business Daily.
With the tagline “Upside is Senior Living in Disguise,” the founders are working to build the biggest senior living community in the world without laying a single brick.
The Miami-based provider takes what it believes is an uncommon approach to senior housing, partnering with traditional multi-family housing properties across 42 states, where older adults live in apartments that inherently are multi-generational. Upside works with building operators to access units within a building, which are vetted to be appropriate for older adults, Rothstein said. Upside controls a varying amount of units per building, he added, depending on availability.
“And then we wrap around a layer of services, all to really duplicate the experience a person might get in a traditional senior living-based environment and doing it outside the walls of a facility,” Rothstein said.
Those services fall into four buckets, he said: activities, transportation, food and healthcare. Upside employs vetted third-party providers for healthcare services ranging from acute mobile care services to skilled nursing at home, Rothstein said.
Wednesday, Upside announced a new partnership with Moves for Seniors, which will help prospective residents downsize and move into the active adult communities.
“This partnership will enable Upside to offer prospective members a consistent concierge-style moving and downsizing experience across its growing list of markets nationwide,” Robert J. Burg, executive vice president of Moves for Seniors, said in a statement.
Rothstein said that partnering with Moves for Seniors was a natural next step for the company as it looks to extend its service capabilities to meet the needs of members. Moves for Seniors is a national company, so it was a good fit for Upside’s national footprint, he said.
