In order to realise their ambition of staying at home, the elderly must either accept the adaptation of their current home or move into adopted housing either as the owner or as a tenant. The fittings and facilities should also safeguard the elderly against accidents that happen in everyday life.
The Commission for Consumer Safety and the National Agency for Community Care Services, in association with practitioners, highlight the social cost of the risks of everyday accidents in the home (almost 10,000 deaths per year amongst the over 65s following a fall at home). Cf. annex 3-5.
Although the work that needs to be carried out has different costs, a number of elderly persons are not able to bear these costs, regardless of whether they have to pay them in full or just pay the amount they are required to contribute to top up the subsidy provided by public funding. Furthermore, given their age, they are considered to be atypical borrowers.
The broad scope of the reflections initiated in this field is focussed on entrepreneurial projects. We refer here to a different approach, even though the vocabulary used is identical, targeting the dual challenge of the financing of the adaptation of housing and the number of owners who still represent a majority amongst those over 65.
The ANAH is a central reference point for all matters regarding housing for the elderly. The adaptation work required to meet with the territorial needs is carried out using the subsidies that are granted by the ANAH, but the procedure used to examine the applications should be streamlined (outside the commissions) so as to cut through some of the red tape. With regard to the priorities, then they should be made clear to the general public and fixed for a period that is adapted to property cycles.
Even though 75% of the elderly are home owners, many of them only have an extremely low income. In order to avoid them having to live in housing that is not safe or having to sell their home in order to live in either social or private rented housing or even in a retirement home, then it is worthwhile looking at the possibility of using the value of their property in order to pay for the required adaption and to ensure that they may continue to live in their own home. Solicitors may play an important role in this process, particularly in the rural areas. The report submitted by Claude Taffin and Bernard Vorms to the Minister for Social Affairs provides a good illustration of this point (cf. annex).
This proposal has been drawn up on the basis of legal analyses and of the practices of social housing associations and managing agents so as to identify the legal adaptations required to permit the development of efficient, community-based services. The amount would be limited to a maximum of €5 a month. As a reflection of the tenants’ resources, this participation in the costs would only take the form of a contribution, since the amount is lower than that necessary to balance expenses incurred by the structure that provides the service and finances the total cost.
