Madeline Hill may be unique among senior community developers. She created her multi-million dollar “city,” – an upscale, yet affordable group of single-family homes, condo’s and apartments -- not so she could become a rich and powerful CEO, but so she could hand
whole thing over, debt-free, to home-owner’s association. It was a vision thing. Hill got idea when she was a high-level bureaucrat with state senior services and saw her friends getting old, needing help and having no place to go but assisted living centers, adult foster care and nursing homes in big town 15 miles away.
Why couldn’t this aging group of friends live near each other for support, have services brought to them (rather than being shipped around to various facilities as their need for care deepened) and, above all, keep and use their hard-won equity to maintain their own home -- a much simpler, single-level, maintenance-free home that works for older people?
“What decided me was when my neighbor fell and it became apparent she couldn’t stay in her home,” said Hill. “She asked me to help her move to an apartment 12 miles away. She cried in car and said, I bet you won’t come visit me. She said she would never again see her friends, library, parks, friendly cashier at market and all things that spell community and make life worth living.”
Through 1970s, vision took hold – helping older people to live independent lives, with dignity – and surrounded by friends, family and community. Especially women, who, at that time, hadn’t had access to credit and knowledge of how to handle money.
“I took a seminar called ‘Do You Have What It Takes To Be an Entrepreneur.’ It was oriented toward women and it opened my eyes that I could do things and be assertive – that women could be leaders, make decisions and that it was ok for women to talk about money and power and be comfortable in that realm.”
But Hill herself knew almost nothing about money and to prove it, she and her husband Hunter had just lost $40,000 by handing it over to a broker who put it in limited partnerships, “which had no inherent value but were supposed to be good tax shelters,” Hill said.
“It wiped us out and was embarrassing, too. I decided I was never going to put faith in something I didn’t understand. I started reading about real estate. The concept came: I knew my town – Ashland -- city council and planning commission and local economy. The was something I could see and feel and learn – opposite of sending money to New York City.”
Hill went to library (this was before internet) and checked out books on how to make a million in real estate. She also read two life-changing books – Phyllis Chesler’s “Women, Money and Power” and David Schwartz’s 1959 classic, “The Magic of Thinking Big.”
“Schwartz showed me that, with about same effort, you can do something to help one person or a whole lot of people. About same time, a guy came (to her state jobsite) and gave a lecture on positive nature of change. In doing processes and games, I realized all others resented and resisted change and I was only one who loved it. I knew I had to get out of there.”
Hanging onto her job in meanwhile for cash flow and borrowing power, Hill in 1985 bought her first rental for $19,000. She could choose tenants, check their credit and divert savings from jobs into something that was growing. (The Rogue Valley was then beginning an enormous surge of immigration, mostly from California, and appreciation in housing prices that’s still going on.)
The investment was hands-on and labor intensive. With help from her retired parents, Hill learned how to hang sheetrock and insulation, lay carpets and paint rooms. She liked it. It was real and tangible, with results you could see and feel a sense of accomplishment about.
She joined local rental owners association, learning from peers – and her realtor – how to analyze a property with an eye to something that would grow. She told her real estate agent to watch for next good property. It was a duplex for $72,000 on a nice street in rapidly appreciating Ashland. Hill in 1987 took big leap – refinancing her own home for down, but getting lower interest so her own payment remained same.
The magic of investment was beginning to work. She fixed up duplex (now appraising at $270,000 a gain of over $12,000 a year) refinanced it to lower interest twice, while pulling out $25,000 each time to land two more rentals, since fixed up and sold at profit.
But it wasn’t all about money. Hill was an old-fashioned liberal and feminist, whose values were shaped in sixties and seventies. Her work was always somehow grounded in improvement of society, an ethic instilled in her by old-fashioned, hard-working Norwegian parents who lived with and cared for their aged parents and a disabled aunt.
“My mom drove a school bus for disabled children and my best friend had cerebral palsy and was in a wheel chair. I got to deeply value disabled people as who they really are inside. As a child welfare worker, my first job out of college, I began trying to move handicapped children out of hospitals and to advocate for them being part of society,” she said.
Hill’s life mission shaped itself around getting people out of institutional settings and into mainstream. As a social worker in 1970s, she did just that with veterans, then, through 1980s, as regional manager for State Senior Services, got to see hopelessness of nursing home residents – and started doing something to phase them out.
She pioneered federally-funded “Oregon Model for Long-Term Care” – moving seniors to community-based settings, such as adult foster care and assisted living facilities. The model was centerpiece for a White House Conference on Aging and was adopted by dozens of other states.
