Pooling your resources and skills

WHAT options are available when living in the family home isn’t optimal, the children are on a different continent, buying into a lifestyle retirement village is beyond the budget, and the prospect of a traditional old-age home inspires only dread?

Globally, retirees are starting to look for alternative lifestyle and accommodation options, where the pooling of resources and skills create a safe environment in which people can still enjoy life to the full but with the support they need.

Babayagas’ House in Paris in France is a self-managed social housing project launched in 2013 by a group of women who wanted to maintain their independence, but live communally.

The late Thérèse Clerc, who conceptualised the project in 1999 when she first faced the prospect of retire- ment, believed too many people regarded old age in the same light as a terminal illness, and she was determined to prove them wrong by living differently.

Together with a group of likeminded women, each with a different skill set to contribute, they set about creating this unique community which has proved to be hugely successful.

The community now comprises 25 self-contained flatlets – 21 for residents and four for students attending classes at the university for senior citizens on the ground floor of the building.

In South Africa alternative lifestyles are also popping up everywhere with friends pooling resources for an alternative lifestyle. – Tracy Bartlett