Yesterday was a less intensive day from a visits perspective, but we still managed to do a fair bit of driving. For some reason, we're trying to find places on google maps rather than with a GPS. The poms have always been intrepid explorers.
This was a fascinating day visiting what can only be described as a social experiment conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Trust at Hartrigg Oaks near York. Joseph Rowntree was a chocolate manufacturer and philanthropist extraordinaire. He established a company town because he wanted his workers to live in comfortable surroundings.
In more recent times, the Joseph Rowntree Trust has established next to the company town a retirement community of some 150 "bungalows" (villas in our terms), a well-appointed community centre including restaurant plus a 40 bed care facility.
There are a couple of really interesting things about this village.
From a design perspective, it is laid out like a garden suburb with extensive "greens" separating blocks and streets of houses and with generous gardens attached to the units.
From a social perspective, this village is run like a commune in that people pay a contribution towards care whether they need it at that point or not and, at such time as they do need it, they are entitled to care at the care home or up to 21 hours of in-home support. This scheme has been worked out on actuarial principles so that the overall contributions and expenses will balance out.
The costs to live at this development are steep given that the entry cost is higher than the median house price and the actuarially-based service charge is quite high.
The capital for the project was originally put up by the Trust as a loan to be paid back from profits.The properties are acquired on a "lease for life" basis with the ingoing price being returned to the estate and with no share of capital growth to be enjoyed. Since the village's inception, house prices in that part of England have appreciated considerably, giving the project a windfall profit. Our impression was that this had cross-subsidised the care system, which we doubted could break even, actuaries or no actuaries.
This is a real community, albeit a well-to-do one. A lot of informal caring goes on there. The very significant achievement here is that the care facility is very under-utilised (not a problem in this system as it would be for us). This means that the village residents are very successfully cared for in their own units. The residents spoke of using the care facility for respite and rehab rather than as the end of life point of call.
Fascinating.
We drove back down to Newmarket, the home of racing, near Cambridge where we have spent the night in a converted mill with great design and pretentious food. We were joined for dinner by architects from PRP, the brand leader in UK architecture for the aged. We are visiting two of their facilities today and they will accompany us - a clever idea.
Got to go
Ray
It was great to meet all four of you, what a great raport you have with each other. Jenny and I enjoyed what was actually a thorough grilling from you all about how things are done and why ... and some good observations were made. It is fascinating that you have the exact opposite problem to the UK, you say your older persons housing facilities tend to only cater for the middle income bracket while ours tend, on the whole, to support those on low incomes - we are trying to fill the gap so that everyone has access to appropriate and attractive housing. I look forward to the continued blogging to see how and whether your views from your early visits remain the same. Hope your Friday eve in London worked out well. AMN
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