Sheltered housing

jenniferpa

I'm not familiar with the Boston area so I don't know one way or the other. However, I note that all those vacancies are for bedsits. Not necessarily a bad thing, but again, not particularly desirable.

Murtle

Active adults can want to go into sheltered housing as one example when they have no local family and their friends have passed away. Loneliness is fairly common and the sheltered housing facilites can provide company and security they otherwise wouldn't have.Activites are arranged that they can partake in, there is someone nearby to help if needed, there are other people in their age group (maybe) that they can talk to etc.M

Savvy_Sue

Murtle wrote:

Active adults can want to go into sheltered housing as one example when they have no local family and their friends have passed away. Loneliness is fairly common and the sheltered housing facilites can provide company and security they otherwise wouldn't have.Activites are arranged that they can partake in, there is someone nearby to help if needed, there are other people in their age group (maybe) that they can talk to etc.M

Plus they're planning ahead, because waiting until you NEED the sheltered housing can be disastrous, if you stop being able to manage where you are but can't get anywhere suitable quickly.

I've known several sheltered housing schemes which would really only suit quite mobile people. Some of them were built in the days when it was unusual for an elderly person to live alone, for those who didn't have family, and certainly in the days when a bath was a luxury and a shower unheard of! They may badly need updating, but the costs of doing so can be prohibitive, especially if the building is listed in any way. In fact the Housing Association I used to work for had started to offload some of these properties, because they were just NEVER going to be suitable for the 21st century.

There's also a new buzzword: Very Sheltered Housing. Increasingly, people want to retain their independence, but the facilities available in Sheltered Housing may not be adequate - there was a thread not long ago about the daily call from a Warden being replaced by a telephone alarm system, for example. VSH doesn't offer the 24 hour care that a nursing home might, but (I think) should offer 24 hour on-site warden assistance, and may offer other services as well.

Here's an example of a local scheme - anything like that near you? The obvious big advantage of having all kinds of care on one site is that if your mum now needs Sheltered facilities but may soon need Very Sheltered, she's not uprooted again, if that makes sense.

seven-day-weekend

My MIL and FIL sold their house and were given a bungalow BUT they had medical points...he had chronic heart disease and she had arthritis. My sister and brother-in-law sold their house and were given a council bungalow BUT they both had medical points...she had Alzheimers and he has Parkinsons.

AFAIK unless there are surplus properties this is the only way you will get one.

jenniferpa

Savvy-sue - I do so agree about the advantages of very sheltered housing (or extra care housing). My Mother's in one of those, and apart from everything it has going for it, including short term nursing if necessary, when the time comes, as it probably will, when she needs much more nursing, she won't need to be too uprooted. A change of room, yes, but the same staff which is very important.

Savvy_Sue

Don't know if this is still an issue, but there's a post on this thread about the Shaftesbury Housing Association which seems relevant.

Dotdot

Several vacancies in many of the 30 schemes here, I believe. I understand you can hang on to your own house for up to 6 months to see if you like sheltered housing amd want to stay, but then will have to sell it to be a permanent Council tenant. Presumably you have friends or family in the area to want to move, and the MK Council seem very helpful about that.