A leading housebuilder has thought of an inventive answer to the UK’s housing shortage, by moving older people into retirement homes and allowing younger people to purchase their homes.
McCarthy & Stone, Britain’s leading builder of retirement apartments, has alerted that a city the size of Manchester (approximately 500,000 people) needs to be built every two years for the next 20 years to house the UK’s ageing population.
A super sized building programme to meet this shortage would not noyl release up to 3,750,000 existing and much-needed family-sized homes to stop the Uk’s family housing deficit but would also maintain 250,000 new construction jobs a year to 2033 and provide a substantial boost to the economy.
As underlined in the March 2013 House of Lords’ Ready for Ageing? report to which McCarthy and Stone gave evidence, the UK’s specialist housing provision trails sadly behind other developed countries with just 2% of housing stock built as retirement housing in comparison with 17% in the US and 13% on New Zealand and Australia.
But 17% of people (9.2 million) in the UK at present are over the age of 65 and by 2033 it is predicted that over 13 million people will be over 65.
A 100% rise in those aged over 85 is expected by 2030.
Nevertheless, just 1,600 specialist retirement homes were built for ownership in 2012.
That figure is substantially below demand for this type of housing.
Steve Secker, regional managing director for McCarthy & Stone, said: “Releasing more homes for families will benefit the entire housing chain and lead to more jobs.”
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