As few studies focus explicitly on social support for residents by residents in retirement communities which have staff, this thesis is designed to explore the nature of informal social support among residents at planned, non-subsidized retirement care facilities: the types, the amount, the impact, the limitation and the appropriateness of such support. Our focus is to explore whether different organization of a retirement community affects social support among residents, so we compare two retirement care facilities. One provides single-level care for its residents and the other provides multiple-level care. We chose our two sites from retirement care facilities in the City of Portland, Oregon. We generated our data by interviewing residents who live independently in the two retirement communities.