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SoLiLL Project Group "Bread and Housing"

New Forms of Accommodation for Seniors

Introduction

In Germany there are a number of new forms of accommodation for people in the Third Age or people who are in need of continuous nursing care. Since the privatisation of old peoples' care and since the introduction of Social Nursing Care Insurance Law of 1995 in Germany, a market providing new interesting forms of accommodation came to being. Not all these experiments have been successful. The positive idea of >>"Supervised Accommodation" was welcomed by many older people, because it combined a high degree of private atmosphere and a provision of external nursing care when there was need for it. However, what was not taken into consideration at the beginning were the relatively high costs for the nursing care when this became necessary. Besides this, the "Supervised Accommodation " suffered a loss of image after some houses went bankrupt as the financial return from rentals did not cover the costs of their expensive building and equipment (Please see article in "Spiegel", issue No. 7, February 2002, >>"Endstation Sehnsucht" ).

Due to the large number of housing forms and experiments, this study can cover only a number of selected examples. These are both private initiatives as well as initiatives of institutions. In many cases, these are still in experimental stage but have shown promising results up to now. We did rely mainly on researches in the Internet. The examples we have selected are:

1. Care for the elderly in substitute families (Altenpflegefamilie)
2. Offensive Aging (Offensives Altern e.V.)
3. Inter-generational living (Generationsgemischtes Wohnen)
4. Young and Old Under One Roof
5. Not Alone and Not in a Nursing Home
   

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