Vivarium Trust (Co-housing for Older People)
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-03413, in the name of Roderick Campbell, on the Vivarium Trust and co-housing for older people. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes the efforts by the Vivarium Trust to publicise the benefits of co-housing in North East Fife and across the country; supports efforts to establish a trial project in order to highlight what it considers to be the benefits associated with co-housing for older people, including security and mutual support among peers, autonomy, people retaining control over their own circumstances, companionship instead of isolation, a sense of belonging, community and commitment and affordability through shared costs, and understands that, since its inception in Denmark, these positive attributes have been widely associated with co-housing.
17:33
I welcome the members of the Vivarium Trust who are in the gallery for the debate: Hugh Hoffman, Margaret Farrell, Erika Topolewska and Senga Bate. I also thank my MSP colleagues who have stayed behind for it.
I am pleased that we are able to have the debate and to bring the work of the Vivarium Trust and the benefits of co-housing to the Scottish Parliament’s attention, following on from the trust’s exhibition earlier in the year.
The Vivarium Trust was set up in 2007 to promote co-housing through the provision of information and advice. The trust believes that co-housing offers a new and better way of living for older people. The model involves an affordable, self-managed form of living that combines the autonomy and privacy of individual households with a sense of community and mutual support.
The Vivarium Trust plans to establish a pilot project in North East Fife so that it can demonstrate how co-housing works in action, test the practicalities, and offer a new model of housing that it hopes will encourage others across Scotland and the United Kingdom. I am delighted to announce to Parliament that the Vivarium Trust is in the process of setting up a partnership with Kingdom Housing Association to establish its pilot project in the St Andrews area of North East Fife.
Members might ask what co-housing is. By way of background, I can tell them that the concept originated in Denmark. The first attempt to build a co-housing community started in the winter of 1964, when Danish architect Jan Gudmand-Høyer gathered a group of friends to discuss housing options. The concept found its feet in Denmark in the 1970s, and today there are many well-established co-housing projects there. There is also continued growth in new co-housing communities, and the concept has been incorporated into the master plans for many larger developments.
In the UK there are co-housing projects in Dorset and in Springhill, although they are not specifically for the over-50s. The concept has spread across the globe, with co-housing projects in the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and the United States of America.
That is no surprise, because each home is designed for the individual while existing in a community that contains communal facilities, based on the needs and preferences of members. The communal facilities are often in the form of a common house and include areas for leisure and socialising, office space, gardens and workshops.
Every co-housing community has different needs, but all co-housing communities have the same characteristics. First, there is the democratic process. Residents lead co-housing projects through the various stages of development and then manage the community through a democratic structure. All co-housing communities are designed for people. The community is designed by and for its residents, and although separate households exist they all share common goals.
The central tenet of co-housing is the shared facilities, often a common house that is the hub and heart of every co-housing community. Shared facilities differ between co-housing communities, and communities often open up their common space to the wider community.
The co-housing model offers a variety of benefits for people who choose to become involved in a project and it provides the opportunity to create an active community among its members. The Vivarium Trust was set up to demonstrate why co-housing is an important additional living model for older people. Research shows that many of the housing options that are currently available to older people do not meet their needs—and certainly do not meet the needs of an increasingly active older generation, whose members want to retain their independence for as long as possible.
In the current financial climate, it is understandable that more and more older people want to retain their independence and require affordable housing. The co-housing model offers older people the chance to minimise their living costs, through energy efficiency measures, ecological design and the sharing of facilities. Projects can maximise their income through social enterprise, for example by selling on surplus renewable energy that is generated.
It is important to be mindful of the benefits of co-housing for older people, which go beyond reducing living costs. Far too often, older people feel isolated from their community. Co-housing offers companionship and mutual support instead of isolation. It allows the individual to feel a sense of belonging and community and enables older people to have on-going, active responsibility for their circumstances, which promotes mental and physical wellbeing.
The Vivarium Trust is in the process of setting up a partnership with Kingdom Housing Association. The pilot project will be an intentional community for the over-50s, based on the co-housing model. The proposal is for 25 to 30 self-contained dwellings of different sizes, which will be purpose built or adapted on ecological principles. All the dwellings will be designed with ageing in mind. The whole project will be designed with sustainability in mind, in not just the economic but the social sense. That principle will permeate every stage, from the initial planning application to on-going living in the development.
The proposed amenities for the pilot include areas for socialising, a kitchen/dining area, a library, an office/computer room, a laundry room and gardens. There is the possibility that the project will have a small leisure facility.
In keeping with the principles of co-housing, members of the pilot project will be responsible for every stage of the development. The development will be a demonstration project, to show the general public, young and old, the practicalities and benefits of sustainable living in a co-housing community. The Vivarium Trust hopes that the project will demonstrate how co-housing can be applied in Scotland and the UK.
The Vivarium Trust has a committed group of approximately 20 members who are committed to becoming involved in the pilot project and are already looking forward to the design of the common house. Many other members are committed to various degrees, and the trust is continually looking to recruit new members. I hope that the debate will assist it with that goal.
The work that the trust is undertaking is clearly incredibly worthy, and it has been mindful of developing the project so that it will make a positive contribution to the Scottish Government’s national objectives. It is hoped that the pilot will provide an example of how housing can be developed to aid Scotland in becoming a healthier, fairer and greener society.
I am pleased to have been able to focus members’ attention on the trust and co-housing, and I welcome, and congratulate it on, its work, including the work that it has already undertaken to publicise the benefits of co-housing and in the project in North East Fife. I wish it every success in the future.
I thank members for their cross-party support to enable the debate to take place.
17:40
I am not particularly familiar with the Vivarium Trust, although I know that it had an exhibition in Parliament earlier this year, and we have just heard a very interesting speech that gave us many more examples of its work.
Co-housing, which was developed in Scandinavia, is one model, but there are similar types of community development that accommodate people with shared interests in specific or mixed age groups. I want to reflect on some of the benefits of those developments and of the more familiar varieties that we know. I will use them to highlight why that type of development, of which co-housing is one example, is particularly helpful for people.
My sister lives in similar accommodation, but it is not a co-housing project. It is in Tunbridge Wells, but I do not think that she ever signs her name as “Disgusted”. There are several owner-occupiers in individual flats in her large house, but as everybody is a member of the committee they make decisions about how the house and gardens will be maintained and various other things. From what she has said, that can have its frustrations as well as its benefits.
Many of us are, of course, familiar with accommodation for older people, such as retirement housing, sheltered housing and very sheltered housing. Such housing may be owner occupied or socially rented, but it has many of the benefits that Rod Campbell has described in talking about the Vivarium Trust. I have been around most of the accommodation for older people in my constituency over the years, and I have always been particularly taken by the extreme liveliness of the residents. Many residents in such accommodation are in their 90s and may have physical disabilities. There is always a contrast between meeting people in that type of accommodation and going into a residential care home—there are contrasting outlooks on life. I know that many accommodation complexes have their own committees that organise outings and social events. Residents do those things for themselves.
Earlier in the year, I went to a Scottish evening at half past 6 in one of the retirement housing complexes in my constituency. I thought that older people—some of them were in their 90s—might not want to be up all night or have folk hanging around. I left at half past 9 and was told later that the event went on until 3 o’clock in the morning. I heard that the same happened at Hogmanay. I might try to get an invitation to the complex at the end of this year, as the people there seemed to have a heck of a lot more fun at Hogmanay last year than I had.
At the Finance Committee meeting this morning, we heard that housing spend is a cornerstone of preventative spend and that investment in housing adaptations can save the health service much greater sums of money through preventing older people’s emergency admissions to hospital or admissions to residential care. There are interesting statistics. It may seem that I am going slightly away from what we should be talking about, but the approach of people designing things according to needs is relevant to the co-housing debate. The all-party parliamentary group on housing and care for older people at Westminster has said that the average cost to the state of a fractured hip as a result of someone falling is nearly five times the cost of a major housing adaptation and 100 times the cost of fitting grab rails or rails of that sort.
When I went to one of the Hanover (Scotland) Housing Association sheltered housing developments in my constituency, I got a copy of the research that it had carried out. It was found that, for an average cost of £2,800 for adaptations, the Scottish health and social care system could save an average of more than £10,000 or the equivalent to 483 hours of home care, 19 weeks of care with nursing staff or two orthopaedic operations. When we look at that level of savings, we can see how appropriate housing, of which co-housing is one model, can make a huge difference not only to the lives of older people but to the interventions that they require from the health and social care services in the future. Therefore, all such developments are very much to be welcomed.
17:45
I thank Rod Campbell for bringing this debate to Parliament today and for inviting the Vivarium Trust to have a stall here a few months ago. I found it fascinating to learn about the trust.
I wanted to be in the debate today more to listen and learn than to make a strong contribution, but when I tell members about the population statistics of my constituency, they will understand why I want to listen and learn so much about housing that will help us as we grow older. Presently, the numbers of 60 to 74-year-olds and people aged 75-plus in East Dunbartonshire, which encompasses my constituency of Strathkelvin and Bearsden, are 2 per cent above the national average, but the registrar general for Scotland’s projections for 2035 show a decline in all age groups in East Dunbartonshire except for 65 to 74-year-olds and people aged 75-plus. We are facing an explosion in the population of those aged 75-plus from the current 9,196 to 17,090, living well, long and healthy lives but requiring housing that is appropriate to their needs.
One of the things that struck me was that the number of households in East Dunbartonshire with someone aged 75-plus will have risen by 88 per cent by 2035. That tells us something about the housing needs in my constituency. Currently in Strathkelvin and Bearsden, there are 423 sheltered housing properties, but in 20 years’ time there will be 17,000 people aged over 75. Members can see from that why I am interested in this debate and in what the Vivarium Trust does. I am so delighted to hear that there is going to be a project that we can all go along and see and learn from.
Reading up for this debate was so exciting, because I found out, for example, that 8 per cent of Danes live in co-housing—so it is happening already and in good numbers—and that there are 230 co-housing schemes in the Netherlands. It is therefore not just pie in the sky, because it is really working.
I got so excited the more I read about it and I think that a lot of my constituents will as well. The idea of an intentional community that combines the autonomy and privacy of the individual household with the mutual support offered through a degree of collaborative living is right up my street and the street of many of my constituents. I came across a lovely quote that stated that people have to start thinking about this when they are in their 50s and 60s, so that it is there for when they really need it.
I intend to go out with my dog-walking group, which is a bunch of women in their mid-50s who had the sense to have dogs and not late babies, and talk about becoming an intentional community and working on co-housing for our group. Of course, we might not want a communal house; we will want a communal kennel. I am being serious, because some of the things that I have learned are so exciting. The fact is that the inception, design, detailed planning, building and development of the co-housing property through to its on-going operation is managed by the members themselves in a fully participatory manner. That is right up my street and, I am sure, the street of many of my constituents.
It is interesting to learn that co-housing for older people is now incorporated as an option in the national housing policies of Denmark and the Netherlands. I hope to be able to explore the issue further with the Scottish Government with regard to the very particular needs of my constituency and its growing elderly population. Thank you very much and thank you again to Rod Campbell.
17:49
I, too, congratulate Roderick Campbell on having brought the motion before Parliament for debate tonight. In fact, it is a subject that I have heard of in the past, but I feel quite guilty about not knowing more about it. Like previous speakers, I hope that by the end of the debate I will have been properly focused on the subject and will be able to do more about it.
In fact, the more I read my notes, the more I realise that co-housing is quite an attractive prospect for someone like me. As I am a young man—in my mind I am still a slim 21-year-old—my plan was to look at it as something in the distant future. The problem, though, is that we need to think about these things earlier.
In my research I found the same fact that was used a moment ago. However, a figure was missed out previously, so I would like to read it out in full to demonstrate the full horror:
“Co-Housing was first created in Denmark in the 1970s, and around 8% of Danes aged over 50 now live in Co-Housing.”
That indicates to me that I am not as young as I thought I was and it is about time I started to think about these things.
We in this country like to do the best for our older people. Quite often, with the best of motives, we end up doing things that are not exactly what we set out to achieve. We work hard these days to keep older people in their own homes and in the communities in which they have traditionally lived. However, the problem with that is that in traditional housing, as they get older they become isolated. Many of our older people who do not suffer a particular disadvantage, either health-wise or in terms of access to the community around them, find themselves increasingly isolated simply by their increasing years. In fact, by doing the right thing we are sentencing many of our old people to an old age in solitary confinement.
That is why a principle such as co-housing could deliver so much more. If older people can work together and ensure that their needs are properly catered for without the necessity for continual, round-the-clock nursing or observation, it will enable them to maintain their independence. At the same time, as they get older, they can become dependent on each other. It ensures that their privacy and decorum can be maintained, yet they are never alone and never left without, at least, observation.
We need to recognise those changing needs. Like previous speakers, I am fully aware that the number of people in the older age groups will continue to rise dramatically in the years to come. Should I be lucky enough to live into my 70s or 80s, I expect to be part of a very much larger cohort than is the case today. For that reason, I genuinely believe that this opportunity to move forward with the Vivarium Trust’s proposal and to look at the pilot and its results will allow us to change our attitude towards housing for older people, to pool resources, to maintain the independence and sanctity of individuals in their old age, and to ensure that when I am older I will have a really interesting place to stay. I look forward to that opportunity and to learning more during the course of the debate.
17:53
I, too, thank Roderick Campbell for bringing the debate to the chamber this evening and highlighting the work of the Vivarium Trust.
As someone born and raised in Lanarkshire and living close to New Lanark, it is no surprise that I have some interest in place making founded on the principles of the co-operative movement. Yet we still have such a long way to go, despite New Lanark’s beginnings in 1784. I hope that members will indulge me when I talk about that a bit. When he founded the mills in New Lanark, David Dale was already a successful businessman, who had benefited from the surge of trade from tobacco and textiles in Glasgow in the late 1700s. He was considered an ethical employer by the standard of the day, but it was the succession of his son-in-law, Robert Owen, to control of the business that was truly transformational.
New Lanark was not about workers’ houses but about establishing a community—place making in the true sense of the process and philosophy. New Lanark gained an international reputation for social and educational reform and—another first for Scotland—it had the world’s first infant school. It also had a crèche, free medical care, a comprehensive education system for its children and lifelong learning opportunities, with evening classes for adults. We hold many of those values dear today, and we debate many of them in this chamber to this day.
New Lanark also offered leisure and recreation opportunities. They were integral to the design of the place, with opportunities to attend concerts and go to the dancing.
All of that was set in the tranquil and beautiful landscape of Lanarkshire, nestled at Corra Linn in the Falls of Clyde.
On new year’s day 1816, Robert Owen delivered an address to his workers. He said:
“I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold: and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal”.
Unfortunately, our society has been ignorant for too long. That is why I welcome the enlightenment of the Vivarium Trust and its pilot programme for Scotland. It is a co-operative movement that, by appropriate place making, seeks a better way of living for older people, who will be able to access affordable, self-managed living and accommodation that is appropriate to their needs. It will be a supportive environment and community offering recreational facilities and social inclusion. It will also be built on the principle of participation, with residents involved in the design stages. It will be built on ethical standards and to ecological efficiency standards, and the build quality will ensure that there are affordable homes with low heating overheads.
However, should that not be the blueprint for all our housing? There are fantastic examples of housing, some of which Elaine Murray detailed. In that list, I would include the Grödians development in Lerwick in Shetland and the Blackwood homes at Cala Sona in my home town of Wishaw, which support disabled residents.
Is it not incumbent on all housing associations and local government to build and design our homes and living communities with the idea of community cohesion at their core? If we did, perhaps we could then truly aspire to the example, the co-operative ideals and the utopian dreams of Robert Owen, nearly 200 years ago.
17:57
I congratulate Rod Campbell on securing this debate and thank him for drawing wider attention to the work of the Vivarium Trust to publicise and develop co-housing for older people. I also welcome the members of the trust who are observing the debate from the public gallery.
The motion gives me the opportunity to highlight the benefits of co-housing in enabling older people to live independently in a community with mutual support and control. It also allows me to set out the Government's wider work on housing and support for older people, to which Vivarium's work contributes.?
“Age, Home And Community: A Strategy For Housing For Scotland's Older People: 2012-2021” contains our 10-year strategy for housing for Scotland's older people and was published last December. We were delighted to be able to include as a case study the work of the Vivarium Trust to develop co-housing in Scotland.
We have heard from Fiona McLeod and Alex Johnstone about the challenge of the ageing population. It is forecast that the number of people who are aged 75 and over will increase by 82 per cent by 2035.
It is also important to note that, as was mentioned, the Vivarium Trust is thinking about people who are aged 50 and over. Perhaps we should be thinking about the issue before it is too late.
We heard from Clare Adamson about the importance of people being involved in the project from start to finish. That is an important issue for me. In my short time as Minister for Housing and Welfare, I have found, when I am going around housing associations and new developments, that the ones that have involved the tenants and the community are the most successful and are comfortable places to be, even upon arrival. That is what we get from what is being proposed by the Vivarium Trust. Who knows better what is required in design of homes than those who will live in them? As Clare Adamson said, we should be thinking about that in relation to all our housing.
We also continue to face tough economic conditions, with real-terms reductions in the Scottish budget of more than 11 per cent over four years—a loss of more than £3 billion, which is not insubstantial. It is therefore vital that we have the right housing support for older people. Our getting that right will enhance people’s quality of life and their wellbeing. It will also make better use of our resources by reducing the number of falls and other accidents in the home, and consequently the number of emergency hospital admissions.
Our national strategy for housing for older people is built around four themes that are exemplified in the co-housing model. Those themes are: older people as an asset, choice, planning ahead and preventative support. Our starting point is that older people consistently tell us that they want to remain living in their own homes and communities for as long as possible. It is right that older people, as everyone else does, should have that choice. Where older people are able to live independently in their own homes, wider society benefits as well as the older people themselves. Scotland’s older people are an asset.
Co-housing provides an environment where older people can remain active. We heard from Dr Elaine Murray about the activities in older people’s housing complexes in her constituency. Those sound very interesting, and I think that we would all like to join the parties there. Co-housing allows older people to contribute to their communities and to retain control over their lives.
I should make it clear—as others have highlighted—that there is no single model of housing and support that meets the needs of all older people. Older people are as diverse as any other section of society, with differing needs and expectations that reflect their individual life experiences. That means that we need a range of different types of housing and support services to meet those needs and expectations. Co-housing is one of the newer and more innovative housing models that we are keen to encourage. It showcases age-appropriate design, affordability and, as we have heard, energy efficiency as well as a mutually supportive community.
One of the central themes of our work on housing and support for older people is prevention. The importance of preventative work has been widely recognised, including in the Christie commission report and in our response “Renewing Scotland’s Public Services”. We cannot pretend that we can always prevent falls or deterioration in health, but there are many preventative services related to housing that support wellbeing and reduce the likelihood of traumatic and costly hospital and care-home admissions. Co-housing demonstrates many of the features of the best preventative support services for older people in terms of the control that it gives residents and its personalisation to their individual circumstances.
The publication of our national housing strategy for Scotland’s older people was an important milestone. The strategy was put together with the help and support of a number of housing and older people's organisations, including the Vivarium Trust, as well as—this is an important point—older people themselves. However, the strategy did not mark the end of our work; in many ways, it was just the beginning. As a Government, we are committed to the development of preventative support services for older people. We are also considering options for the future delivery and funding of housing adaptations, which play a key role in helping older people to maintain independent living, as we have heard in relation to the evidence that was put to the Finance Committee.
In conclusion, older people’s issues have rightly gained prominence in the housing agenda. We need to sustain the momentum that we have built up and to increase it as we implement our strategy and deliver our vision. With its major contribution to the development of co-housing in Scotland, the Vivarium Trust is part of the rich mix of housing and support that we seek to build in order to help enable older people to live independently. I have been delighted to hear about the progress that has been made and I will follow the pilot with interest. Tonight, I wish Vivarium well as it continues its work to develop co-housing in Fife.
Meeting closed at 18:04.