A community hub approach to older people’s housing

This paper explores the potential of housing with care schemes to act as community hubs. The analysis highlights a range of benefits, barriers and facilitators. From a policy perspective, housing with care has often been described as falling somewhere between sheltered housing and residential care homes, although some local authorities are now seeing extra care housing as a more enabling and homely replacement for residential care. Housing with care has significant potential to contribute towards the aims of government policy in England, particularly in terms of managing the increased financial burden of a growing population of older adults through more innovative housing initiatives that support the aspirations of older adults. Potential benefits of this approach include the integration of older people’s housing, reduced isolation and increased cost effectiveness of local services through economies of scale and by maximising preventative approaches to health and wellbeing. Successful implementation of the model depends on a range of criteria including being located within or close to a residential area and having onsite facilities that are accessible to the public.