Ripon gets 82 senior apartments. How might they help ease Modesto-area shortage?
Jerry and Cindy Terpsma found their retirement home on the third floor of a new Main Street building in Ripon.
They took part in a celebration Wednesday of the 82-unit addition to the Bethany Home senior community. The apartment rents range from about $3,000 to $6,500 a month, but residents get meals, recreation and some health services.
“The staff is wonderful,” Jerry Terpsma said. “The food is wonderful. All our needs are taken care of.”
The couple were among the first residents in September at the building, called the Terraces at Bethany. It is at Main and Vera Avenue, the west edge of Ripon’s historic core.
Another 54 apartments have been occupied and six more have been leased, Executive Director Cindy Scheublein said. They include studios and units with one or two bedrooms, available at bethanyripon.org.
The $57 million, three-story project is for seniors who are mostly independent. Other parts of Bethany offer assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing and rehabilitation.
“This is the concept of aging in place,” Scheublein said. “You come in as independent living, and then you may need additional services.”
Bethany was founded in 1963 by Christian churches and other leaders in the area. Dutch names are prominent among them, as in Ripon overall, but people of any background are welcome to live there.
The nonprofit began with a 74-bed nursing home on a former almond orchard just south of the new building. It later added the less intense levels of care, along with housing in apartments and cottages.
Bethany now has more than 400 residents and 235 employees across the sites. The staff serves other seniors at a daytime program and through home visits.
The new building has a nurse on hand on weekdays and on call at other times. Residents can dine in a bistro or a more formal setting. They can work out in the fitness center, read in the library and get creative in the arts and crafts room.
The place has gardens in some of the common interior spaces. The exterior has elements of old-style town design, with facades close to the sidewalks. The brick amid the stucco harks back to some of Ripon’s older buildings.
The design was by CallisonRTKL, a global firm with an office in San Francisco. Quiring Homes, based in Fresno and Pleasanton, was the building contractor. It got started after the 2022 approval by the Ripon City Council.
The Terpsmas’ apartment has two bedrooms, one of them used as an office. Cindy is a retired registered nurse. Jerry was a longtime teacher of American history and government at Ripon Christian High School. The campus used to be on the very spot where the new apartments were built. It is now about a quarter-mile to the north.
The Terpsmas are renting out the Ripon house where they lived before moving to Bethany. Jerry said he does not miss the home maintenance, nor the hefty PG&E power bills.
“What drew me to the place was that my yard was getting too big to handle,” he said.
Construction such as this frees up other homes, according to experts trying to solve the shortage in Ripon and beyond.
This city already had some of the higher apartment rents in the area, averaging $2,363 a month in a November report from Rentcafe.com. Most of them do not come with the meals and services that Bethany provides.
State law mandates that cities plan housing for a wide range of incomes. Ripon seeks a total of 1,424 new houses or rental units through 2031. This includes 174 for households under 30% of the area’s median income, 173 between 30% and 50%, and 218 between 50% and 80%. The rest are for people with moderate or larger incomes.
People priced out of Ripon might look a few miles south to Modesto. The much larger city had an average apartment rent of $1,720 in November, according to Rentcafe.com. Its state-mandated plan calls for 11,248 housing units of all types.
This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 12:11 PM.
