Story by Eric Allison.
The Census Bureau says to expect 74 million baby boomers 65 and older by 2030. By 2036, Americans nearing their 80s are projected to grow 56 percent — even as the country builds only a fraction of the senior housing it needs.
Mary Ann Stalling, founder and president of Bridge to Better Living, knows these numbers cold. But she didn’t come to this business through a spreadsheet. It came from multiple experiences caring for family members and friends, including moving her mother more than 300 miles off the family farm.
“Every time we went to help, we started all over again,” she recalls. Her husband’s parents, an aunt and uncle, a widowed friend, her own mother — each move taught her the same lesson: everyone’s needs are different, and nobody hands you a map. “It may have been a different need physically, it may have been a different need financially, but we didn’t know where to start,” she says. “We wasted a lot of time.”
Those learned experiences were the foundation of her business plan. For the last year and a half of a 28-year career teaching middle school, Mary Ann quietly built what would become Placement with Passion,® known now as Bridge to Better Living. She officially opened the doors on February 1, 2010 — the first senior placement service in both Omaha and Lincoln.
The service she built rests on one non-negotiable: it costs families nothing. Bridge to Better Living is paid by the senior communities, not by the people they help, which allows the company to focus on the right fit for each client. Starting out, she walked into senior communities cold with, as she puts it, “five reasons why Bridge to Better Living would be an asset to their community.” Some said yes right away. Others took a year or more to come around.
Fit, in her world, comes down to four pillars — social, physical, medical, and financial — determined through an initial consultation. Is the client an extrovert who wants book clubs, or someone who’d rather keep to themselves? Do they need a walker, or memory care, or a community that accepts a Medicaid Waiver?
“You’re looking for a place that matches your personality,” she says, “not just a place to rest your head.” Family tours are spaced out deliberately — no more than one a day, ideally with a day or two between — so families don’t confuse which community offered what. That luxury of pacing evaporates, though, for the families who call with 48 hours to find a retirement community that meets their needs before a hospital or rehab discharge.
For those cases, Mary Ann’s team already knows exactly where the openings are. It’s the expertise you count on when senior and assisted living demand has risen steadily for 20 consecutive quarters, pushing average occupancy close to 90% in some markets due to limited new construction inventory, according to NIC MAP, a data analytics platform built to track senior housing inventory.
BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING
Her staff reflects the complexity of the job: a social worker, a registered nurse, an occupational therapist and colleagues who spent careers marketing and opening senior communities, all meeting weekly to compare notes on shared clients. It’s a “woman-powered team,” and Mary Ann says this diversity of expertise is what lets them see around corners families wouldn’t anticipate. By the end of the process, she says, the relationship has usually outgrown the transaction. “They’re no longer clients. They’re friends.” She’s collected enough thank-you notes calling her team “angels” that the word doesn’t feel like an exaggeration anymore.
Her advice to anyone watching aging parents — or contemplating their own next chapter — is to plan before the emergency forces the decision. Build a short list of communities you like. Put down a deposit, or two or three; in nearly every case, an unused deposit is refunded. And do it while you can make your own choice rather than one being made for you.
Mary Ann sums up what she wants families to remember in three S’s: smooth, stress-free, successful. It’s a tidy phrase for a messy, emotional transition — but for 16 years, it’s been the promise a trailblazer has kept — one family at a time.
Bridge to Better Living
https://bridgetobetterliving.com
