Bad Kötzting zooms in on housing for juniors and seniors

From thursday April 20th to sunday April 24th 2022 delegations from twelve partner towns were hosted by Bad Kötzting for the fifth meeting of the project “Juniors for Seniors, Active Ageing”.

This meeting the project zoomed in on housing: how do seniors and juniors live, is there enough housing available, is it affordable?
The different partner towns showed many similarities. Either there are too few houses or they are too expensive. In the eastern European countries many four story appartment blocks were built during the Soviet era. The buildings had no elevators, which nowadays presents seniors with a problem: they have to use the stairs. Some housing companies add elevators as an external addition to the building.

All European cities find seniors to live in their houses for too long which causes a shortage of houses for young families. Some cities stimulate creative home exchange to help both groups. All partner town suffer from an ageing population and youngsters that leave town and settle in the big cities.

Some partners towns came up with solutions:
– Senior appartments, elderly homes or housing where youngsters live among seniors, spending time supporting the seniors thus reducing the rent.
– Elderly homes combined with day-care. The children and the seniors are active in joint activities and festivities. During the project a visit was organised at “Seniorenresidens St. Benediktus” where the active ageing was put into practice.

The results of this project will be published on tis website soon. The overall end-report will be presented to the European Commission and also be published here.