Faced with the aging of the population, a report recommends developing senior residences

A report by the High Commission for Planning published on Thursday February 9 recommends creating 200 to 300.000 places of alternative housing, such as senior residences, in order to absorb the aging of the population by 2050.

Co-written with the Gray Matters think tank, the report also figures at 60.000 the number of additional places in Ehpad (accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people) to be created in the same period.

The development of senior residences, rather intended for "fragile" people but not yet dependent, will be quickly necessary, note the authors. Their number will indeed explode in the decade 2020-2030, with the passage of the baby-boomer generation into the 75-84 age group.

"This new generation of elderly people is precisely the one who turned 20 in May 68. (...) How can we imagine that this generation can resign itself to living its old age in the same way as the generations that preceded it?", they ask.

The report identifies three areas for adapting housing to aging: conventional housing for independent people, alternative housing for the fragile, and nursing homes when dependency sets in.

For autonomous people, it recommends the adaptation of housing, with the massification of the MaPrimeAdapt' system which should be launched in 2024.

Cities will also have to adapt their town planning to the elderly who do not have a car and are less able to move around.

For moderately dependent people, the authors recommend the development of "alternative housing", bringing together senior service residences, autonomy residences or intergenerational housing.

This can be a solution for territories where the standard of living is low, or for sparsely populated places, where currently, for lack of alternatives, people who do not need it are placed in nursing homes, they note.

They also recommend a "massive deployment of the home help offer", via "radical decisions (...) in terms of the pricing of home help and care services or in terms of the attractiveness of professions given the current shortage.

For severely dependent people, the creation of places in Ehpad will become urgent from 2030, when the number of people over 85 will start to skyrocket to almost double in 20 years.

The Ehpad should, according to the report, open up more on their territory, for example by opening their canteen or by offering geriatric consultations to non-residents; and by deploying their services (meal delivery, remote monitoring, etc.) at home.