Santa Barbara has long been called the American Riviera, and the name is not marketing. It is a description. The white walls and red tiles, the bougainvillea over the courtyard arches, the citrus in the front gardens, the long view of the channel from the Riviera neighborhood at sunset — these are the inheritances of a city that, more than a hundred years ago, decided what it wanted to look like and has, against considerable pressure, declined to look like anything else.
The result, for those of us who serve households here, is a city of unusual livability. The streets are walkable. The blocks are short. The neighborhoods are distinct, each with its own quiet character. The institutions are close. The Mission is up the hill. The harbor is at the bottom of State. The library, the museums, the small theaters, the restaurants where the staff remembers the order — all of them are within an unhurried radius of nearly every home. Santa Barbara is, in the most generous sense of the phrase, a city you can age into.
We serve families across this whole geography — from the Mesa to the Upper East, from the Riviera to Hidden Valley, from the streets behind the Mission to the small cottages tucked into the avenues near the beach. The work is, in spirit, the same in all of them. The texture varies in the small ways that texture should.
What Santa Barbara Asks of Us
The city itself, more than any of its individual neighborhoods, sets the tone for the work we do here. Santa Barbara is a town that values graciousness without ostentation. The fine restaurants are warm rather than imposing. The longtime residents dress carefully but not formally. The greetings in the small shops on State Street and on Coast Village Road are unhurried. The pace, even in the busiest hours, retains a fundamental composure.
Home care here is expected to match this register. The caregiver who arrives at a Santa Barbara household should be polished without being stiff, attentive without being intrusive, professional without being clinical. The household is not, in most cases, looking for someone in a uniform. It is looking for someone who carries herself with the same ease the household carries itself with — someone who could, plausibly, have been a longtime friend stopping by to help, rather than an agency placement arriving to perform a service.
This is a particular kind of caregiver. We have, over the years, become skilled at recognizing her, and at recruiting her. She tends to be experienced. She tends to be self-possessed. She tends to be warm without being effusive. She is, simply, easy in a household — the way longtime housekeepers and trusted family friends are easy. The texture of Santa Barbara rewards this disposition, and our work is, in some quiet way, an extended translation of that texture into the daily life of the home.
A Day in a Santa Barbara Household
The mornings here are kinder than the city's reputation suggests. The marine layer comes in along the channel, and the first hours are often softer and grayer than the postcards would lead one to expect. We have come to love these mornings. They unfold without insisting on themselves. The light, when it breaks, comes through the windows in a way that needs no announcement.
A good morning in a Santa Barbara household — say, in one of the Spanish-style houses up on the Riviera, or in one of the smaller bungalows behind the Mission — proceeds with the rhythm we have described elsewhere. The caregiver arrives quietly. The kettle goes on. The newspaper is brought in. The medications are placed where they have always been placed. Breakfast is unhurried. The day, by nine or ten, is genuinely underway.
Mid-mornings often involve a small outing. Santa Barbara, more than almost any city on this coast, makes small outings possible. A drive down to the harbor to watch the boats. A walk along the breakwater. A stop at the small bakery on Anacapa where the same baker has been making the same loaves for thirty years. A few minutes at one of the benches in the rose garden behind the Mission. These are not big events. They are the small daily punctuations that keep a life in conversation with its city.
The afternoon walk, in Santa Barbara, has a particular pleasure. The neighborhoods vary so widely, and so charmingly, that the walks themselves become part of the week's rhythm. The Mesa, with its tilted streets and its long views of the channel. The Upper East, with its old houses and tall jacarandas. The Riviera, climbing up into the foothills, every house a different vintage of grace. The flat blocks behind the courthouse, with their tall trees and their occasional surprising gardens. A skilled caregiver, who has been in this city for years, learns these neighborhoods until she knows where the bench is on each one, and which corner has the wisteria in spring, and where to catch the breeze in August.
Evenings in Santa Barbara are quiet for most of our clients. The city has its restaurants and its small concerts and its busy nights, but the rhythm of an aging household is rarely calibrated to them. Dinner at home. The book or the music. The early bedtime. The day, gently closed. We hold these evenings in the way we hold every evening, with attention and with restraint, in households across every part of the city.
Where the City Matters Most
Two qualities of Santa Barbara matter particularly for the work we do, and they deserve their own brief mention.
The first is the medical infrastructure. Santa Barbara, for a city of its size, has unusually strong medical resources. Cottage Hospital is here. Specialists in nearly every relevant field are within the city or the immediate area. The Sansum Clinic is a long-standing institution. The doctors who serve aging populations in this city are, in many cases, well-known to each other and to us, and we are accustomed to working alongside them — coordinating transportation to appointments, communicating with physician offices when authorized, supporting medication regimens that involve multiple specialists. This coordination is part of what we do. Families do not have to manage it alone.
The second is the longevity of the community. Santa Barbara has, for a long time, attracted people who came here and stayed. The result is that many of our clients have been Santa Barbara residents for fifty or sixty years. They have friends across the city. They have favorite restaurants that have been their favorite restaurants since the seventies. They have, in many cases, longtime neighbors who have grown old alongside them. We honor these networks. We help our clients stay connected to them — driving them to lunch with old friends, making sure the calls to their longtime physicians happen, supporting the small social maintenance that sustains a long-rooted life.
This is part of why aging in Santa Barbara is, when supported well, often a happier proposition than aging in cities where the residents are more transient. The community is here. The history is here. The places that matter are still where they have always been. Our job is, in part, to help our clients stay in the city they have built their lives into.
A Note on the Beach, and the Light
We would be remiss, in a letter from Santa Barbara, not to mention the beach. The long curve of East Beach. The quieter stretches west of the harbor. The path along Cabrillo Boulevard, in the early evening, when the palms throw their tall shadows across the asphalt and the bicycles go by in twos and threes. These are part of what makes this place what it is.
Many of our clients no longer walk the beach itself. The sand is hard on tired feet. But the path along the boulevard remains accessible, and the view of the water never stops being the view of the water. A caregiver who knows what she is doing brings her client out here in the late afternoon, on the right kind of day, simply for the air. The pelicans pass. The light goes amber. The day rests, for a moment, on the surface of the channel.
This is part of premium home care in Santa Barbara, even though it appears on no schedule. The city itself is a participant in the care. We are, in some quiet way, the ones who make sure our clients continue to participate in the city.
A Final Word for Santa Barbara Families
If you are reading this from a house in the Mesa or the Upper East, from the Riviera or one of the cottages on the avenues, and you have begun to think about home care for a parent or for yourselves, we would be glad to be one of the conversations you have. There are good agencies in this town. We believe we are the one most carefully built around the standards this city quietly expects, and we are willing to demonstrate it across an introductory visit, a no-pressure conversation, and as many follow-up questions as you wish to ask.
Santa Barbara is, in our considered view, one of the finest places in California to age well. It deserves home care built around that fact. We have tried, with seriousness, to provide it.
— The House of Age Well Care