Housing choices and housing plans of older people

• Planning for the housing situation of an ageing population is one of the challenges of many countries today. In Sweden housing provision is mainly a matter at the municipal level and although the municipalities do not provide housing themselves, they can facilitate for the actors to realise their housing plans and influence the situation in the housing market. In or-der to do this successfully, knowledge about the housing preferences of the different actors is crucial. Most people today remain in ordinary housing all through life. In Sweden only 5 per cent of the population aged 65 and above move to assisted living. This results in greater de-mands on the housing that is available in the ordinary housing market and on the municipali-ties in ascertaining that suitable housing is being provided. In order to increase our under-tanding of the needs and wants of the ageing population, a survey was conducted in 2013 in which the respondents answered questions about their current housing situation and their housing plans for the future. The research questions raised regarded the choice of housing location in relation to the respondents’ current housing, similarly the choice of tenure and housing size and if there are differences in the choices made depending of the age of the indi-vidual and in the type of municipality in which they live. The survey was sent out nation-wide, to 4000 people aged 55 years and older resulting in a response rate at 60,7 per cent (2400 individual), the oldest respondent being 103 years old.In this study the housing plans as regard location and housing type were in focus. The aim was to distinguish if there is a time in life when the locations and/or the type of housing the respondents would prefer changes, a tipping point. Preliminary results of 10 year cohorts show that the most frequent the movers are those aged 55-65 and 85 and older, the former mainly moving within the same tenure whereas the latter are more likely to change tenure, into rental housing which is more often located in central areas in the municipality.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)