Tag Archives: retirement villages

Older Canberrans have a housing crisis too!

Posted on by

With our ACT elections coming fast at us, the Vintage Reds dug deep and placed an ad in the Canberra Times, to draw attention to the homelessness, as well as abuse even of the housed, among older people.

Maggie from our Aged Care sub-committee has drawn together a useful summary of each political party’s policies on housing for the aged, which can be found in this website.

Here is the ad, which ran from top to bottom on the outer side of page 5 in last Saturday’s Canberra Times. A second run is planned for this Saturday.

Vote on 19 October 2024.

Early voting open now.

Retirement Villages Not a Safe Haven?

Posted on by

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.

Members of a retirement community (image: Wikimedia Commons)

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?

Continue reading →