Housing for Older People

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising that question. In fact, there was an article in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago about a friendship that had formed between a young student who had gone to live with an older person. In return for free housing, he was providing gardening and shopping services, and two years into the pandemic they are now the greatest of friends. Models such as Homeshare clearly have a lot to offer. Generally, the department thinks it is great to see innovative models of housing which are contributing to our aim of enabling older people to live healthier, independent lives for longer and preserve their independence and connections to the community. My noble friend is quite right: we estimate that there are currently something approaching 3.7 million of underoccupied houses, but many people wish to stay in their house and are looking for a scheme such as Homeshare to be able to do so.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young, spoke of the objective of freeing homes for families. Would the Government consider increasing the incentives for older people to vacate their homes, which are too large for them, to make way for younger families?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. There are a number of barriers to older people wanting to sell their current home. The task force will look at ways to incentivise that. That might be through the tax system or through incentivising more suitable housing to be built locally by housebuilders. For example, in New Zealand, I believe that five of the top 10 housebuilders are geared towards providing home villages for the elderly.