The Right Move?

17 June 2021

The right move?: it’s difficult making housing decisions in later life

Written by Barbara Davies, founder of The National Care Line

About 5 years ago I read the latest All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People inquiry report, ‘Housing our Ageing Population: Positive Ideas’.  

At the time I was approaching my middle 60’s, a homeowner and disabled, and realised that the whole issue of my housing choices in older age was galloping towards me.

One thing that disturbed me greatly was: why there is a lack of housing in general – not only for the elderly, but for the young too so causing the village communities to break up.

In the village where I grew up, very few of the young people that I went to school with could afford to live there when they became adults. They had to find somewhere to rent or buy in the nearest town that was more affordable and available.

Ours was a rural setting and, with the downturn in agriculture, people were forced to reskill and look to other industries for work. However, they still wanted to live near their parents and their children go to the same village school that they did when they were young.

In the end, what happened was that they closed a great many of the smaller schools and enlarged one to take all the extra pupils. So, with the schools gone in several villages, it wasn’t long before the shops and post offices went too.

It goes without saying that this caused great difficulties for the old people as they had nowhere to go to collect their pension and buy what the food they needed and, much more importantly, they had no one to have a chat to. They could often go a week or more without seeing anyone once their trip to the post office and shop disappeared.

Our village school survived because it took children from other villages that had closed their own schools and there is still some housing provision for older people locally in the form of sheltered housing but not nearly enough.

If there was a better mix of housing and more of it, older folk could move out of the bigger homes into housing more suited to their needs, thus releasing more homes for younger families so the housing cycle could be active again.

The HAPPI 3 report rightly explains the ‘vacancy chain’ a move creates. This is well known but it doesn’t happen; and it doesn’t because people in later life leave it too late before they move. They insist in staying in homes that are no longer fit for them.

In fact, a great many elderly people endanger their lives by continuing to live in substandard housing simply because they are afraid or, more truthfully, cannot cope with a move. They are afraid of the unknown, of leaving their friends and neighbours – the people with whom they have shared memories – making the thought of moving something they would rather not think about, well not yet anyway!

This is where we need to focus our attention. We need to ensure the housing proposition for older people is far more attractive. I suggest the following: Drawing on the APPG inquiry report, the first is building more multi-generational homes, ones where children, parents and grandparents can live together. Secondly, getting away from ‘estates’ with lots of dark corners. Housing families and the elderly in flats so that you have to use lifts to access your home should stop.  These are all areas that invite crime and are unsuitable for community living.

The children in this country miss out on so much because their grandparents are not nearby. The children help to keep the grandparents young as the cover of HAPPI 3 illustrates!1www.housinglin.org.uk/HAPPI3

They help them with techy stuff and they are very involved in their grandparents lives and their well-being. These grandparents are not lonely because they have their families around them. They are also someone for grandchildren to talk to, to listen to them and to share experiences with. At a time like this when we have so many people suffering with mental health problems, decent affordable housing can and does, have a truly positive effect on the mental health of both young and old in the community.

If older people need care, it can come in as needed through the District Nurses etc., but importantly, they may never need to move anywhere else as, not everyone needs to go into care.

When carers can’t cope we tend to put old people into ‘care’ homes. These homes are not where they should be as they are not part of the community. If every community had some provision for older people who needed extra care this could solve the biggest problem which is that people don’t want to leave their community. So not make the proposition more attractive for them?

Usually the existing stock of care homes tends not to be central to the village not next door to the village hall or school; these homes are often up at the end of the village and, if the shop has closed, they end up seeing no-one.

Planning needs to be community minded with the needs of the community at the heart of the design. For example, accommodation for the older people should be outward looking; adjacent to the village hall, school or nursery so that the community folk can mix. Older residents can see the young children – possibly their grandchildren can pop in after school and have a snack with Nan and Grandad until a parent comes home – in any case, where they can see life. I think the key to all of this is to present a community offering based on what a person entering later life accommodation being seen by them as an acceptable future.

If you can get the vision right, then mechanics like moving can be done with caring ‘help to move’ workforce teams that work with the individual to help them sort and pack and settle them in their new home.

The key is to find out what the community needs and wants. To identify what choices exist locally and work out how to match these identified needs so that you keep the structure and heart within the community.

I do hope this happens as nothing much has changed over the past 5 years and I hope that by the time I am an elderly resident there will be adequate provision for my needs in my community.

For more about the National Careline, go to: www.thenationalcareline.org