In the entrance hall at the House of Generations, an electric mobility scooter is lined up next to a push-along children’s scooter. An elderly man shuffles by with a walking frame while a little boy whizzes past on a tricycle. There are board games in the dining room, a climbing frame in the garden and weekly music-and-movement sessions for young and old.
This innovative housing project on the waterfront in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-biggest city, is pioneering a new form of intergenerational living that could offer a solution to the crisis in social care while also boosting the supply of affordable housing and delivering high-quality preschool education.
The House of Generations is the care home of the future, where the elderly play an active part in the community rather than being shut away behind closed doors. At the same time, it provides cheap accommodation for students, low-cost homes for young families and reliable childcare for working parents. It is simultaneously fixing three of the trickiest social policy conundrums facing many Western countries and, since the start of the Ukraine war, some of the flats have been given over to refugees fleeing the conflict too.
The aim, explains manager Kristian Dall, is to create a neighbourhood where people can live happily for their whole lives. “It is a modern version of a traditional village where everybody knows each other,” he says. As all countries struggle to deal with ageing populations and increasingly atomised societies, policymakers have been coming from around the world to visit the Danish experiment and see what they can learn.
Around 300 people live in the House of Generations, which opened in the autumn of 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 crisis. It took a while to fill up because mixing between ages was discouraged during the pandemic, but now more people can see the advantages.
There are 100 retirement homes, where residents have daily visits from a care worker, and 100 nursing homes, which come with more intensive medical support. Scattered between the apartments for the elderly are 40 family homes, 40 youth flats and 24 apartments for disabled people. Each corridor has a demographic mix. Some flats have shared kitchen and bathroom facilities and others are self-contained.
There is a nursery with 150 places as well as a craft room, a carpentry workshop, a music studio and a gym. A kayak hangs from one wall and the table in the corridor is scattered with children’s paintings.
Older residents babysit for young families and students help solve the pensioners’ technology problems. One elderly man is planning to get five chickens to keep on the roof terrace, which has a garden. “The children can help look after them,” says Dall.
Once a week groups of children from the nursery move to the nursing home sections around the property and do their activities there so that the oldest residents can enjoy the company of the youngest. Soeren Nissen, 65, makes sure not to miss these weekly visits, trundling to the sessions on his mobility scooter. “I like it so much. We sing together. My flat is above the kindergarten so I can hear them all day. My grandchildren love to come here.”
He has a box of Lego in his flat for young visitors. “When people ask me do I like living here, I always say, ‘No, I love it,’” he says. “We speak together, eat together. I’m in the nursing home department so we don’t make our own food. It’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, tea, cakes, the whole day. I have an alarm so I can call the nurses if I need to.” He has a heart condition but he is not giving up on life just yet. “I’ve got a girlfriend,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “She’s 92 but age doesn’t matter in this house.”
Down in the nursery on the ground floor, teacher Anne Bents, 24, insists her young pupils benefit just as much as the older residents. “They learn how to socialise and to show some empathy. It gives them a different perspective, an understanding that you have to take care not only around smaller children, but also that older people can be fragile too. It helps the younger ones mature and I think for the older ones it gives some life joy back.”
There is no requirement for younger people to join shared activities, but they are encouraged to volunteer, helping those in wheelchairs down to the hall for a concert or going for a walk with someone who might be lonely. Per Lidell, 68, says the residents are currently trying to raise money to buy some double bikes so an elderly or disabled person can sit next to an able-bodied rider. “Of course we will need somebody who is strong enough to push the pedals, so you need the young people to participate. Then we have a new feature, which is the Friday afternoon bar. All the generations are there. There’s always something going on.”
That includes concerts, movie nights and an annual music festival. It must be hard to find a film that everyone wants to watch, but Lidell says it is an eclectic mix. “Last time it was an old Danish movie, but I’m recommending a horror film next.”
Lidell shows me around his flat in the “home care” section of the house. In his youth he was a sailor and the walls are lined with pictures of boats. Now he has Parkinson’s disease and walks with a frame. “It was a strategic decision to move here,” he says. “The Parkinson’s was getting worse, so I thought to myself, it’s better to find a place where you are close to the nurses but you still have interaction with young people.”
The House of Generations grew out of a need for more social care provision in Aarhus, but the mix of ages living at the property means it can tap into multiple local authority budgets. “The whole house has four owners,” says Dall. “There are three different departments in the municipality, for schoolchildren, the elderly and disabled people. Then we have a private housing association involved too.”
Like Britain, Denmark has a growing number of older people. The government has made it a priority for elderly citizens to stay in their own home for as long as possible. Local authorities are required by law to visit everyone at home in the years they turn 75 and 80 to assess their need. Those who are living alone at 70 are also included. These preventive home visits are designed to reduce the number of people ending up unnecessarily in hospital or in residential care.
The municipalities have a legal duty to provide social care for patients being discharged from hospital. If they cannot do so then they have to pay the hospital for the cost of the extra nights on the ward. This has created a strong incentive to innovate. The focus is on empowering rather than infantilising the elderly. At the House of Generations, there is a much greater degree of flexibility than in a conventional care home — people can increase or decrease the support they receive as they age. Independence is encouraged but back-up is on hand if it is suddenly required.
Elderly residents pay for their accommodation and food, with care costs funded by the state. The most intensive nursing home apartments cost the individual around £1000 (NZ$2060) a month in rent, comparable to the weekly cost of a place in the UK. This is topped up by another £3800 from the public purse. The student rate is just over £500 a month and the average rent in the family apartments is £1100. The cost is similar to other properties in the city, but the shared facilities are much better than in most municipal apartment blocks.
Arranged over eight buildings on the docks at Aarhus harbour, the House of Generations has been featured in architectural magazines. The communal areas are bright, airy and modern. There is a sweeping pale wooden staircase leading up from an atrium and sculptures positioned around the house. The property has been designed to encourage people to meet. The letterboxes are all in one central hall and there is a shared laundry as well as communal gardens.
“The architects call it ‘insisting’ architecture,” says Dall. “The stairs don’t just go up and down; you have to move around. The common rooms are placed all over the house in order for the residents to get to know each other. You have to interact.”
I meet Brigette Binger, 42, as she is collecting her two youngest children from the nursery. Hannibal is 4 and Henry is 1. She says the biggest attraction for families like hers is convenience. “We can just take the escalator down to the kindergarten. The playground is just outside.” She thinks the children get a huge emotional benefit from mixing with older people. “They love it. They learn to chill and have fun. It’s not forced. This is definitely something that could be copied around the world. I only see benefits from it.”
The Ukrainian refugees have fitted right in. Tetyana Petroniuk, a musician, arrived last June and is now working as a cleaner as well as volunteering as a guitar teacher for residents. Her daughter Maria, 13, runs a dance class. They are both learning Danish. “We like it here so much,” Maria says. “It’s a really cool place.”
There are already multiple generations of the same family living there. Morten Krogsholm, a 32-year-old freelance video maker, moved in last August with his partner, Carla. His sister-in-law was already living there with her children. He visited for his nephew’s 13th birthday party and immediately applied for a place. He has become the unofficial handyman, offering to build Ikea furniture for the elderly residents. “Some people call me the social janitor,” he says, but he insists it is not all one way. “I’ve benefited a lot. It’s nice to be part of some kind of community.”
This may sound like Scandi idealism to cynical Brits, but the social care crisis in this country means that fresh thinking is needed. There are 2.6 million older people in England unable to get the support they need and 165,000 social care vacancies as demoralised staff quit for better-paid supermarket jobs. The record waiting lists in the NHS are driven in part by the 13,000 people stuck in hospital who are medically fit to be discharged. Many are waiting for social care. There is also a desperate shortage of affordable housing for the young. Parents struggle to pay spiralling childcare costs. The House of Generations is killing three birds with one stone.
The idea of intergenerational care has already been piloted successfully in this country. The Nightingale House care home in Clapham, southwest London, has a nursery on its premises. Children take part in singing, gardening and cooking with the elderly residents. In its latest inspection report, the Care Quality Commission said that older people using the service found that the interactions with the young “uplifted them, brought endless joy to their lives and took away the focus of an ageing mindset”. The House of Generations has simply taken it to another level, integrating housing, welfare, education and social care in a way that has economic and emotional benefits for all.
Back in Aarhus, the knitting group has gathered in an upstairs kitchen. A dozen elderly women are sitting around a table, overlooking a playground where children are playing. It is 2pm and the wine is flowing. A few needles are clacking but the focus seems to be more on chatting than knitting. The women are discussing a coach tour to the north of Denmark later in the year. Soeren Nissen’s eyes light up as he introduces me to his girlfriend. Johanna Hoejgaard smiles like a teenager as she confirms their regular dinner dates. “I feel like a duchess,” she says. “My daughters say I’ve gained an additional 10 years by moving here. Now my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all want to move in too.”
- Rachel Sylvester is chairwoman of the Times Health Commission
Written by: Rachel Sylvester
© The Times of London
