How to find retirement communities on a map

[Scotty81]

Hello - I am wondering if the online Esri tool is the right one for my personal use.  I am looking to use the software to identify current retirement communities for a specific geographical area e.g. a county.  I wonder if the tool would also know about proposed retirement communities from zoning board maps perhaps.  

Before I buy the software, can anyone tell me if the product can do what I am proposing to use if for?  If the answer is yes, is there a good way to find out how to use the software for this purpose?

Many thanks in advance.

[AbiDhakal · Accepted solution]

Esri's ArcGIS suite of software can map geographic areas pertaining to census data, landuse zoning, redistricting, etc. It can map the geography of any data provided you have location/spatial information (latitude and longititude) on them. Esri's ArcGIS software you are talking about ,on its own, will not know the retirement communities unless you provide the data to the software; that is how they work. Therefore, before you buy the software you can contact your local government's GIS department and verify if they have spatial data for retirement communites that is compatible with ArcGIS software. It is a great software to map socioeconomic and census data. Good luck!
Abi

[AbiDhakal]

Additionally, when you buy the software, my understanding is they come with tech support. 

[HeatherSmith · Accepted solution]

Hello @Scotty81 

I'll echo @AbiDhakal , you should look for the data first, and your local government GIS department is definitely one of the places you should look.
You should also search on ArcGIS Living Atlas. This is an authoritative library of datasets curated by Esri. Next, search on ArcGIS Online. These are datasets shared by Esri users. In all cases, make sure to consult the terms of use to ensure you are allowed to use the data for your purpose.
Finally, search google for keywords like gis, data, hub, retirement, locations, and the name of the area you are interested in.

Here are a few datasets that I found that might be relevant to you: (I don't know what country you are in)

• Seniors’ Residential Facilities / Résidences pour Aînés (Canada)
• Nursing Homes (USA)
• Nursing Homes Switzerland: Key Figures 
• ALW Assisted Living Facilities (California) 

For all of these, click "Open in Map Viewer" or "View Map" to see the data.

Once you have data, yes, ArcGIS software can be used to find all of the locations within a given area.
For example, you can use the Find by Attribtues and Location tool in ArcGIS Online. For this tool, you'll also need data of the boudaries of the areas you are interested in, but these will probably be easier to find than the retirement homes. For example, here is data for USA counties.

If you found a list or table of locations that is not yet mapped, you can geocode that list to create a map. 

Another data source within ArcGIS is ArcGIS Business Analyst. If you have more questions about that product, post them on the ArcGIS Business Analyst Questions board.