Designing housing decision-support tools for resilient older people

ABSTRACT

Our ageing populations make it critical that older people continue to live and participate in their communities. ‘Ageing in place’, rather than in residential care, is desired by older people themselves and promoted as policy in many countries. Its success, both as policy and practice, depends on housing. House performance, resilience, functionality and adaptability are all essential to maintaining independence. Three New Zealand research programmes have worked with older people to investigate issues around housing, ‘ageing in place’ and how older people and communities can become resilient to adverse natural events. Using participatory research techniques, those programmes have generated evidence-based decision-support tools to help older people maintain independence. These tools have been co-designed and widely tested with older people and others. Designed to help older people identify priorities and information requirements, assess diverse factors determining thermal performance and dwelling resilience as well as repairs and maintenance needs, the tools help improve decisions around: repairs and maintenance assessment and solutions; dwelling and location choices and housing options. Various organizations have adopted the tools. This work demonstrates how research outputs can be used to facilitate older people’s housing choices while also giving architects and designers guides for meeting older people’s housing needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Ageing-in-place
• housing
• resilience
• decision-making
• participatory design
• older people

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge with thanks the interest and involvement of older people and organizations supporting older people’s independence, in providing helpful feedback on research findings, and in tool design and testing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bev Lorraine James http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3881-9201

Kay Saville-Smith http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9880-2153

Additional information

Funding

The research was primarily funded by New Zealand’s public-good science fund administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment under contract numbers: Ageing in place: Repairs and Maintenance RESX0601; Community Resilience and Good Ageing RESX1201; Finding the Best Fit RESX1301; Ageing Well National Science Challenge 12815/1sub1321, contracted by University of Otago.