Housing for elderly ‘reaching crisis’

A CRISIS in housing for the elderly is looming, a social housing conference was told yesterday.

Voluntary housing associations that provide sheltered accommodation for old people are surviving on ad-hoc grants and fundraising as there is no revenue funding scheme in operation, said Donal McManus, executive director of the Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH). At the same time, he said, the Government was paying 110m in subsidies to private, profit-making nursing homes this year.

Mr McManus told the ICSH conference, in Tralee that it would be better for older people to “hop on the Jeanie Johnston as the accommodation services in Ireland are just not sufficient”. He claimed the focus on nursing homes and hospitals was detrimental to the quality of life of older people.

Figures released by the Central Statistics Office show that almost 114,000 such people were now living alone. Of the over-70s, a third of them lived alone.

“Provision needs to be made for older people who will need to move into sheltered housing. Jeopardising housing projects for poor, older people is not the way to achieve this,” Mr McManus said.

Also at the conference, a former advisor to the Clinton administration in the US warned that unless the Government reviewed its policies for the care and accommodation of the elderly, the options of such people for the future remained bleak.

Prof Nicolas Retsinas, of Harvard University, said the lack of proper planning in the area was playing with people’s lives.

“Linkages must be made between housing and care in order to properly provide for the needs of older people in this country,” he told delegates.

ICSH management services officer Karen Murphy said the Government should provide more money to enable the elderly to live in their own homes. For such people who could not live at home, social and sheltered housing was an excellent alternative, she said.

“Lots of housing associations are willing to provide sheltered housing in their own communities.” But, while capital grants that provide almost the entire building costs are available, they are left on their own after that and don’t get enough money from the State for necessary back-up support.”