The CHIC project team make YouTube video to share findings

To coincide with the ‘Collaborative Housing and Innovative Practices in Care (CHIC): an international Exchange’ conference in Barcelona on 6 June 2023, the CHIC project team has released an informative YouTube video.

‘Collaborative Housing: A Better Place to Age?’ is a 9-minute film that captures the views of over 100 older residents across 6 intentional communities in England that took part in this innovative research project. The film shares the study’s key findings into ways in which collaborative housing might help meet the changing care and support needs of older people and help maintain their independence.

Funded by the National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care Research, the team led by the University of Bristol, and involving the LSE and Housing LIN, looked into senior and intergenerational cohousing, self-managed retirement housing, senior housing co-ops.

It found that there are real benefits of living in collaborative housing in later life and one key part of it is greater social interaction enabled through housing design, organised activities, and the need to mutually manage the scheme together. These all contributed to creating close and supportive communities that informally care.

However, it also found that none are an alternative to properly funded and resourced social care. Instead, it found that collaborative housing can enable people to remain socially connected, supported and in control of their own lives for longer.

Speaking in Barcelona, Housing LIN's CEO, Jeremy Porteus, said:

"With the government recently announcing an Older People's Housing Task Force, this film documenting the findings from the CHIC project is an extremely timely release. It demonstrates the social value and wider community benefits of living in a collaborative housing setting in older age."