Embrace Living Communities is an affordable housing provider that has always been focused on quality. Our team members are trained at the highest standards to provide exceptional service, and our communities are inviting so any senior or person with a disability feels they can live with dignity as they age. However, quality of service extends far beyond community buildings. Embrace Living Communities aspires to adopt practices that build quality relationships with people and organizations in the greater communities served. The practices carried out daily at Embrace’s Rockford communities exemplify the quality of these neighboring relationships.
Learn more about ways Embrace Living Communities is a neighbor anyone would be happy to have.
Keeping our Communities Beautiful
John Diehl, Senior Advisor at Embrace Living Communities, says that one of the biggest misconceptions regarding affordable housing often is that affordable properties are not well-maintained. “However, if you visit any of our properties, you’ll see that this isn’t the case,” says Diehl. “We have had some first-time visitors entering our Rockford area properties and say, ‘This feels more like a five-star hotel than an affordable housing community.’ We work hard to make our communities stand out as being well maintained.”
This is made possible because Embrace Living Communities makes a concerted effort to keep both their grounds and facilities clean and well managed. “I process everything through the filter of: If my parents or grandparents were living at this facility, how would I want it run? How would I want it to look? How would I want the employees to interact with them?” says Diehl. “Once you start processing your management style through the lens of, ‘We are family, taking care of family,’ you will begin to focus on making that extra effort to develop an exceptionally well maintained, friendly, welcoming living environment. We strive to develop our building grounds to the point where we are recognized within the local community as being one of the best maintained, best run housing communities in the area.”
Partnering with Local Organizations
Embrace Living Communities prides themselves on developing partnerships with local community organizations to better both the Embrace community and the greater communities they are embedded in.
Diehl and his team have helped facilitate several partnerships at four of the Rockford area communities, which are a part of the portfolio he oversees. These properties have partnered with local organizations such as the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which delivers pantry items and fresh produce to the Rockford area properties once a month; Heritage Woods, which provides wellness programs to residents; the Cares Program at Mercy Health at Home, which helps connect residents to care services related to such things as housekeeping, shopping and transportation; a local podiatrist, who comes on site to provide foot care; Comcast offers Internet Essentials, which is a low-cost, high-speed internet program to both new and existing customers; Rock Valley Center for Learning, which provides a host of educational and affordable recreational programming for seniors and a local licensed clinical social worker, who help residents deal with health concerns as well as grief and aging concerns.
“We’re always looking for new partnerships that can help us address the needs of our residents,” says Diehl. “Our goal is that we want residents to be able to live long, live strong and engage in healthy aging.”
But the partnerships within the local community are not all one way. Some Embrace Living Communities residents also pursue volunteer opportunities to give back to the local community. During the pandemic, Rockford residents wanted to help support the healthcare workers who were working on the front lines in the emergency rooms and COVID-19 wards. These residents raised funds and then distributed healthy snack baskets to the first and second shift health care workers at the area hospital.
Rockford residents participate in a pen pal program called “Grandfriends” and connect with local girl and boy scout troops for games. They have also donated food and household items to MELD, which is a Transition Living Program providing housing, education and life skills to young pregnant or young parenting women.
Residents have also donated daily necessities and food items to Rock House Kids, which is an after-school program for at-risk children; helped serve meals to people without homes at Carpenter’s Place; have donated clothing items to students with special needs at local schools and have done fundraising for the Rockford Crisis Pregnancy Center, St. Jude’s and the Wounded Warriors program.
Being A Good Neighbor
Embrace Living Communities strives to be a good neighbor to the local communities they are in by providing quality, affordable housing. “The definition of a good neighbor is someone who is friendly, welcoming and who keeps their home, or in our case, our retirement communities, in a clean, well-kept, appealing manner,” says Diehl. “Our vision is to provide affordable, welcoming homes for all actively aging adults.”
Embrace Living Communities is proud to provide welcoming homes for seniors and people with disabilities currently in Illinois, Florida and Missouri and will continue to do so for decades to come.
