Innovation: Jubilares co-housing for older people

Spain

AAI Domain: Independent, healthy and secure living (independent living, improving access to health care services)

As people age, they may want to maintain their independence but recognise that this can be challenging given their current home environment. Developing suitable housing options as the population ages is a key challenge and there is scope for socially innovative solutions to develop. Co-housing is a concept that has been developed for many years in various places across Europe, with Denmark and Sweden often considered to be at the forefront of a movement that covers many countries, and North America.

The American architect Charles Durrett popularised the concept of co-housing in he 1980s as an intentional community consisting of private homes supplemented by extensive communal facilities that provide people with their choice of privacy and social interaction. More recently Durrett has focused on designing and championing co-housing for older people and has been a consultant to numerous such projects around the world.

In Spain the concept of co-housing as an intentional community for older people is not well developed but it is being championed by the Jubilares (Jubilee) Association, a not-for-profit organisation established in 2012 that is committed to advising and supporting groups who want to establish their own co-housing project. It is important to emphasise that this concept of co-housing does not involve older people with spare living space sharing their homes with younger people in need of housing. This version of co-housing is an alternative form of housing and community that can be seen as an alternative or stepping stone between independent living in the community and institutional residential care.

Jubilares offers a new model of active ageing through the design, construction and self-management of communities for older people, generally considered to be over the age of 50 years, along with the organisation of integrated and personal care for health and social care needs. This provides older people with regular access to services if needed and reassurance that help is at hand in case of a health emergency.

Jubilares works with groups of people, foundations and other organisations interested in developing co-housing solutions that meet the needs of older people and enable them to age well in the second half of their life. Jubilares provides training courses, runs seminars and has produced a crowd-funded handbook to assist groups through the process of establishing a co-housing community.

Co-housing is based on the principles of personal autonomy, participation and the mixture of physical and social design for private housing within the context of intentional communal living. It usually involves the design and construction of fully equipped private homes with extensive communal areas and social activities that are self-managed with a collaborative ethos under an agreed set of rules. There are now several such co-housing communities, usually based on a cooperative model, that have been established with the support of Jubilares.

In relation to the active ageing index, Jubilares supports independent living for older people in an age-friendly built and social environment. One of the main reasons for people wanting to live in this form of co-housing is the risk of social isolation and loneliness that can be harmful to the mental well-being of older people through encouraging stronger social connections within this intentional community. The Jubilares approach also involves coordinating the provision of person-centred health and social care provision within the co-housing context that improves access to such provision.

Websites

Jubilares

WEDO Partnership