ROOF Blog

Older people should be offered accommodation in bright, purpose-built communities instead of the shabby and cramped care homes where many now reside, according to a new report.

The provision of desirable retirement homes would encourage pensioners to sell their current properties, giving young families a greater chance of raising their children in suburban homes with gardens, it says.

The Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation (HAPPI) was commissioned by Communities and Local Government and the Department of Health to come up with creative proposals to improve housing for older people.

After visiting ‘model’ retirement communities in European countries including Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden it has called for a local authorities and housebuilders to radically rethink their approach to elderly accommodation.

The best developments all had ‘space, light, accessibility and a shared sense of purpose’, with large communal areas where residents could socialise, it found.

The panel said there was no reason why homes in the UK could not be architecturally interesting and built in desirable neighbourhoods.

The needs of vulnerable people will be protected in the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) regulatory framework. Speaking at the national sheltered and supported housing congress, head of the TSA Peter March said that coordination between tenant, landlords and their stakeholders is key to ensuring vulnerable tenants get the best service possible. The TSA consulted with more than 27,000 tenants to develop the standards which will apply to all social landlords from April 2010.

A report out today warns that one in eight tenants in sheltered housing in England is at risk of malnutrition. The study from the Group on Nutrition and Sheltered Housing found malnutrition to be present in 14 per cent of residents, and was more common in older residents, women and those who had lived in sheltered accommodation for longer.

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.

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.