NEDERLAND — Every Wednesday, area seniors gather at Nederland Community Center for a catered luncheon and some conversation: catching up on their personal lives and the goings-on around town.

For the last lunch of 2025, there was one major topic of discussion: Xcel Energy's December power outages. Seniors spoke about how they were affected, and expressed thanks to their network of neighbors and community leaders who checked in and supported one another over the 36-hour long outage. 

To many, the mountains represent a greater sense of security, comfort, and home than in the cities and suburbs, where retirement homes are commonplace.  Nationally, denizens of rural areas are far more likely to prefer aging-in-place—81% of them, compared to 73% of those in suburban neighborhoods, according to a 2025 nationwide survey conducted by the Rural Health Information (RHI) organization. 

But the realities of mountain living can make it challenging to age in place.

“We have three women in their '80s that live in cabins outside of Ward that have no electricity, no running water, they just feed their fires and they’re fine… until they're not fine.” Lexie Armitage, the owner and founder of Home Team Inc., said in an interview with The Mountain-Ear. 

Home Team Inc. aims to become a Class A Home Health Care Agency that provides nursing, companion, live-in, and 24-hour care, as well as post-operative and respite care, which can be paid for through private insurance, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, or the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), as well as other means. 

“I’ve got this vision where there’s someone who raised a family in a Nederland house who now lives alone and has three bedrooms, and then we’ve got young people who can’t even afford to pay rent up here,” Armitage said.

She feels Home Team Inc. can be the solution to both seemingly disparate problems by providing professional caretaker services in exchange for room and board. 

The inspiration for wanting to provide to families the ability to customize their own home care plan based on their unique needs and on the comfort of their aging loved ones came from Armitage’s own personal experience navigating health care options in the mountains when attempting to rehome both her parents. 

“My dad, back in 2004, had a massive stroke,” Armitage said. “Once we got him in the nursing home, his condition got worse. He couldn’t get his spoon up to his mouth, and they didn’t have enough people to feed him. Between my brother Matt and I, we had to take turns going down there to feed him, three meals a day. One night he fell out of bed, and he was on the floor until morning; no one knew that he had fallen.”

Armitage began making preparations to bring her father up into the mountains, where she had to hire three part-time nurses, as well as two people to watch over her father overnight on the weekends. 

“It took a team,” she said. 

Thirteen years after her father had passed, Armitage’s mother was under the grip of dementia; as her condition worsened, the siblings would travel to Canada to assess her health and safety. 

“I’d sleep with one eye open because she’d wake up at night and would decide that a storm was coming and she needed to turn the boat around,” Armitage said, describing a childhood chore that had befallen many members of the family over the years. 

Eventually, Armitage had to trick her mother into coming to Colorado to stay in a cabin that had been painted and furnished to look like she had always lived there. Instead of a team of caretakers, Armitage was lucky to find one unicorn who was willing to work and provide her mother with 24/7 live-in care. 

 “Here’s a mom that raised six kids, and he would make her dinner while he had her feet soaking in warm water. He’d rub her feet with oil before putting on her fuzzy slipper socks; all her life she’d never had that kind of treatment.” 

“Bury me up on the mountain,” Emmet Griffin chimed in, having overheard Armitage talk about her mother during her interview.

Griffin, in addition to being a local musician for hire, got a job through the VA as a caretaker for many Front Range communities, as well as some in the Peak to Peak area. The job came naturally to Griffin, as he had already been working as a caretaker just to help friends and neighbors. 

“There’s only a few caretakers who come up here to help,” Griffin lamented, “and there’s a lot of mountain people who don’t want to leave the mountain, and who need the help…even though they don’t want to admit it.”

“They don’t need help until they need all the help,” Armitage said.

As RHI details, “The physical changes brought on by aging—vision and hearing changes, cognitive decline, mobility limitations, and self-care difficulties, among others—can impact older adults' ability to age in place."

“Approximately 30% of older adults receive caregiving for health or other reasons (such as household chores or transportation), and adult children were the largest group of caregivers. However, younger populations—prime-aged workers aged 25 to 54—are leaving rural communities, creating challenges for older adults who depend upon help from adult children or other family members.”

While seeking professional health care so our loved ones can stay at home is the most common solution to concerns for their safety, such solutions are costly and, in the case of “isolated” communities such as Nederland, not always available. 

Changes at the federal level may worsen those inequities.

Millions of Americans, mostly older adults age 50 to 64, have been impacted by the increase to premium costs for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, leading to a reduced or complete loss of coverage for individuals with low or fixed incomes, and has resulted in individuals losing access to Medicaid, to SNAP, and, in many cases, to caretaker programs.

Though the House has voted 230-196 to pass a three-year extension of health insurance subsidies, the matter has yet to reach the Senate, where many Democratic lawmakers fear it will fail. 

For those up in the mountains, such under-representation—from the state, county, or country—comes as no surprise. Armitage urges mountain residents to start acting for themselves, and soon.

“I want people to meet with us before they need us," she said. "Let’s talk and let’s make sure your family knows what you want."

As for Home Team Inc., they're almost ready to go. Their official office address is registered with Boulder County; they've produced a detailed policy and procedures manual necessary for state review for licensure, and have a final review set with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in February.   Next steps include gaining approval for Medicare and Medicaid and hiring more staff. 

“We are getting closer, but working with the state there’s no way of knowing how close is close,” Armitage said.

Though the framework for the business is near complete and licensure is around the corner, funds are still required to cover the startup costs for such a venture.   

“I’ve got three nurses that are all local and are amazing, and we’re planning to cover Ward, Ned, whoever in Gilpin needs us, Sugarloaf, Magnolia, Eldora, and everywhere in between."

For more information on Home Team Inc., its services and its developmental progress, call 303-517-9659, or visit: mtnhometeam.org  

A link to the official Go Fund Me fundraiser for all donations to this cause can be found on the Home Team website, or go to: gofundme.com/f/help-home-team-build-a-nederland-area-home-health-care-agenc?attribution_id=sl:434bcc1f-1400-4b63-a5fb-00f313bb8cfb&lang=en_US&ts=1768094691&utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&utm_content=amp17_control&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link