Housing Preferences of an Ageing Population: Investigation in the Diversity Among Dutch Older Adults

Moving beyond ‘ageing in place’: older people's dislikes about their home and neighbourhood environments as a motive for wishing to move

“…Third, whilst our findings show that older people are certainly more likely to harbour dislikes about their home compared to their neighbourhood (at least in terms of odds ratios), our descriptive analysis nonetheless suggests that preferences and priorities change as we age, having access to local facilities such as shops or transport for example, take on increasing importance the older we become (De Jong, Rouwendal and Brouwer 2012). Facilitating ageing in place therefore needs to be premised upon a strategic approach which recognises the interconnectedness of home and the place in which it is located.…”

Patterns of changing residential preferences during late adulthood

“…This issue is important because a differentiation in housing for the elderly population is claimed on the basis of socio-economic groups having different preferences. Also, if socio-economic status is persistently more important than age, this would support the ageing-in-place argument (Costa-Font, Elivar and Mascarillo-Miró 2009; de Jong, Brouwer and Rouwendal 2012). If, on the other hand, there are important shifts in housing preferences across the late-adulthood lifespan, this would point to a need for housing adjustment in old age and would be an argument against ageing in place (Hillcoat-Nallétamby and Ogg 2014).…”

Ageing at home, co-residence or institutionalisation? Preferred care and residential arrangements of older adults in Spain

“…Among the new policy pathways, ‘ageing in place’ 1 appears as the mainstream guideline for housing and care measures that seek to preserve and extend as long as possible the autonomy that allows older individuals to remain in their own home as an alternative to institutionalisation (Davey et al 2004; Houben 2001; Sixsmith and Sixsmith 2008). A recurrent statement to back up the implementation of ageing-in-place policies is that older people want to stay in their own home (De Jong et al 2012), a preference supported by studies that reveal low rates of residential mobility between private homes (Angelini and Laferrère 2011; Tatsiramos 2006) and into residential care (Laferrère et al 2013). Additionally, the generalised decrease in the proportion of multigenerational households in Europe – currently ranging between 17 and 24 per cent in Italy, Spain and Greece, to less than 4 per cent in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands (Ogg and Renaut 2006) – has also supported the hypothesis that older people widely prefer to remain in their own home.…”