ROOF Blog

The government should buy homes from the elderly and allow them to move into sheltered accommodation, a parliamentary select committee has suggested. Money from the national affordable housing programme should go to buy up empty homes and those that are unoccupied and have been on the market for more than a year, the MPs said. The committee also insisted that the government continues to build more affordable homes and stick to its long-term house building targets.

More than 60,000 homeowners are being forced to sell up each year to pay for a place in a care home, Counsel and Care reports. It says that as many as many as half of those needing care were being forced to pay the £500 a week costs from their own pocket. Anyone with savings or property worth more than £22,250 must pay their own bills, and councils have legal powers to force those in care homes to sell their houses to meet the fees. The cost of care for the elderly last year was £12 billion.

Vast differences in the cost of long-term care for the elderly have been revealed by research from Saga. Fees vary by almost 50 per cent across the UK and typically cost three times more than the average annual mortgage payment. Northern Ireland is the cheapest region for residential and nursing care, while the Home Counties is the most expensive for nursing care and London the most expensive for residential care. On average someone who requires care in a residential home will pay around £25,000 per annum. In the past decade care home fees have risen faster than inflation.

A council official responsible for helping the homeless has evicted elderly and frail tenants from their sheltered housing in Norwich and moved into it herself with a colleague. Kristine Reeves co-wrote a paper last year recommending that the council demolish the 25 homes and replaces them with high-density housing and flats. Instead of using a security company to keep out squatters and vandals, council officials decided unilaterally to let the accommodation to employees until they were demolished. Meanwhile the former occupants have been dispersed to old people’s accommodation around the city.

The fall-out from the credit crisis has caused problems for elderly people who are unable to release enough equity in their houses to pay for care home fees. As annual fees rise to an average of £24,500, the credit crunch has created a big problem for those struggling to sell their house to pay their fees.