In a residential neighborhood near Ballantyne and Pineville in Charlotte, North Carolina, CoHomes Boutique Senior Living runs an assisted living home built around a deliberately small idea: a maximum of six residents in a single-story house. The home has been operating for six years, and the area is car-dependent (Walk Score 16), so getting anywhere means driving. Charlotte Sanford leads the operation as President and CEO.
The care here runs through a licensed home care agency staffing the home around the clock. That covers the daily essentials, bathing, grooming, dressing, transferring, plus incontinence care, diabetic care, blood pressure monitoring, and medication reminders. The home also takes residents with mild cognitive decline and early-stage dementia, which not every small home does, and adds companionship and safety supervision, including the stretch right after a hospital stay.
Rooms are furnished, private or semi-private, and meals are home-cooked around what residents actually like and need to eat. Practical pieces are covered too: a hospital bed available for rent, walk-in showers, transportation management for appointments. On safety, there’s an emergency response system with pendants and call buttons, security cameras in shared areas, and door sensor alarms.
CoHomes Boutique Senior Living is really built around one premise, that some seniors do better in a small house with a handful of housemates than in a large facility. For residents who want hands-on personal care and early-stage memory support in something that feels like a home rather than an institution, that small scale is the entire point.
