The story
Founded by William H. Thomas in 2003.1
The project was first developed by Steve McAlilly, CEO of Mississippi Methodist Senior Services, and by geriatrician William H. Thomas in 2003, with the goal of personalizing elder care by redesigning nursing homes "from scratch" to provide residents more privacy and control over their lives. McAlilly was preparing to demolish the old 'big box' nursing home and build another when he had a creative idea: call up Bill Thomas and ask what he'd do to reinvent care for the frail elderly.
Thomas is an international authority on elder care and has authored four books on the subject. In the early 1990s, Thomas and his wife, Jude Thomas, founded the Eden Alternative, now a global nonprofit organization that aims to deinstitutionalize long term care facilities by changing the culture of the typical nursing home.
Recognizing that nursing homes were "aging faster than the people living inside them," Thomas later created The Green House Project with the goal of replacing the institutional nursing home model with small intentional communities where elders and staff focus on living full and vibrant lives.
In 2005, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a five-year, $10 million grant for The Green House Project across the United States. NCB Capital Impact currently administers The Green House Project and will continue to do so beyond the current five-year grant.
The first Green House Project home was constructed in 2003 in Tupelo, Mississippi. NCB Capital Impact set a goal to complete 50 houses by 2010; that goal was reached in December 2008. As of 2023, there are 382 Green House Project homes on 81 campuses in 33 states.
From Wikipedia’s article on Green House Project, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3