Older people have been significantly affected by the isolation and restrictions of the pandemic, but they are also a group who were affected by underlying issues of isolation and disconnection well before Covid-19. The Age UK Winter Resilience Campaign 2020 highlights the need to maintain healthy eating, movement and cognitive activities, whilst also advocating support for winter finances to ensure homes are heated and essential items are affordable. One solution to support the older generation is to encourage ‘right fit’ housing choices. While there are publications about this approach, in reality many older people remain in unsuitable accommodation which limits them in their ability to take a healthy aging approach to life. Support from housing planners to create suitable ‘right fit’ housing stock for the older community could support this growing population to access accommodation that can facilitate a better quality of life, supporting cognitive activities within a community of like-minded people and facilitating movement through increased accessibility design. Rather than creating new homes which are aimed at first-time buyers, or compact family homes which can be easily outgrown, investment in the aging population could mean that a better stock of larger, well located properties could be made available to working people. Creating specially designed living spaces would provide an opportunity for a new message- that living in ‘right fit’ accommodation is aspirational, desirable, safer and healthier. The pandemic gives us chance to review the way that we present support for older people within the community, and allows us to reconsider how structures could be improved to combat loneliness and isolation. With investment in suitable properties, older people could remain healthier for longer, reaping the rewards of low energy bills and warm homes supported by modern building technologies and renewable energy systems. Shelter’s 2012 Policy: report, ‘A better fit? Creating housing choices for an ageing population’ states “it is a terrible irony of our housing crisis that single older people struggling to maintain or heat homes that are too big for them coexist with appalling overcrowding. Every under occupier enabled and supported to downsize into a better home for them frees up a larger home that could house a family in need of space” and yet, in 2021, more could be done to ease the way for desirable developments for the older generation. Creating the conditions for ‘right fit’ housing developments needs a thoughtful approach and requires a concerted effort to create a paradigm shift that makes ‘right fit’ housing aspirational. A future infrastructure where the needs of the older population can be more suitably supported to avoid loneliness, isolation, immobility and cognitive decline could mitigate the negative impacts of unpredictable events that might affect wellbeing and health. If every community had appropriate stock of ‘right fit’ housing, and the drive to make it a wonderful lifestyle choice, then the integration of support for the elderly could be streamlined and more productive. Creating a culture of desirable housing in communities would mean that people could plan their ‘right fit’ move earlier, prior to health issues and ensuring the process is a proactive life choice, not a reactive necessity. An article in the Guardian (June 2020) cites a report ‘Too little, Too late? Housing for an ageing population’, by the Cass Business School, the Association of Retirement Community Operators and the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation stating that “The report found that just 7,000 new homes built each year are designed for older people. This, it concludes, is “insufficient to serve the 180,000, 65-plus households that will be created each year over the next decade”. What the pandemic gives us is the driver to change the narrative and to create a supply that can stimulate a demand within the housing market for these much needed, necessary, investment in suitable homes for older people. It’s not too late, but we could risk the timely opportunity and continue to do too little.
1909-11