Canberra facing retirement living and property industry problem

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Retirement living and property industry advocates are warning Canberra faces a so called "silver tsunami" of demand for retirement and supported living arrangements in coming years, unless the ACT government sets targets for development of age-friendly housing options in the city's suburbs.

Transcript

00:00 With a lift to avoid the need to use the stairs and enough space to live independently in

00:07 comfort, retiree Anne Kane and her husband couldn't walk past the opportunity to move

00:12 into this retirement village in Narrabunda.

00:15 We just thought we'd do it while we could and we'd have another certain number of years

00:22 to enjoy life without having to do the garden and that kind of thing.

00:25 Now a member of the Retirement Village Residents Association, Anne knows her positive experience

00:31 of downsizing was fortunate and increasingly rare.

00:34 I had a friend of mine who spent five years looking for a place that didn't have stairs

00:40 and people who have trouble with stairs notice these things when they go into a house or

00:44 out of a house or walk around a house.

00:46 So these places are specifically designed and that's why they're very valuable to have.

00:52 When her association asked the ACT government how many of these and other retirement properties

00:57 and residents there are in the capital, they were told they simply didn't know.

01:02 The property council say their studies show demand is high and growing.

01:06 We have the highest occupancy in the entire country.

01:10 We are at 95% occupancy which when we're talking about retirement villages that means just

01:15 completely full capacity.

01:16 With the number of Canberrans over 75 expected to grow by 75% in the next two decades, industry

01:24 advocates say more places are sorely needed.

01:28 Residents in these communities are 15% more physically active, they're five times more

01:31 socially active, twice as likely to catch up with family and friends, they're 41% happier

01:36 but importantly they're experiencing reduced levels of loneliness and depression.

01:40 The councils want targets for retirement villages to be set in a similar way to affordable and

01:45 social housing.

01:46 We need to be allowing at least minimum zoning within that to be supplied to retirement villages

01:52 to keep up with that silver tsunami.

01:54 The government says it knows there's work to be done.

01:57 Certainly through the current planning reforms there has been a focus on making Canberra

02:03 a more compact city, thinking about how we increase density and retirement villages are

02:07 clearly part of that story.

02:08 Hopes more age-friendly housing could keep more people out of aged care and hospitals.

02:13 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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