If we’re lucky, we will all at some stage get to the point of thinking about where to park ourselves in our older age. Do we make the move earlier or later? Downsize, or join a ready-made community of old people?

Our Deputy Convenor Jane Timbrell* has a salutary piece on retirement villages and the hazards they present to the unwary, published online last month in John Menadue’s Pearls & Irritations.

Canberra has 5000 residents in retirement villages, whose oversight is not a federal matter but is carried out in haphazard fashion at state and territory level. More regulation is needed to stop rapacious operators from gaming a very profitable market of sometimes vulnerable people.

Jane’s piece is attached below.

Retirement Villages: Are they really a safe haven for retirees?

Jane Timbrell

The looming question for me and my partner is “where might we live as we grow older and frailer?”

For us, the ideal place is likely to be a retirement village. But at what cost?