Housing questions answered for WA seniors

Everything you’ve always wanted to know about seniors housing options but didn’t know where to ask: that’s the gap being addressed by COTA WA and the WA Government with a new service for WA seniors.

By Keryn Curtis

COTA WA, in partnership with the WA State Government, has launched the Seniors Housing Centre, a new independent information resource to assist seniors in understanding their choices and making informed decisions about types of housing accommodation for their later years of life.

The service consists primarily of information provision and problem solving, in particular helping people to gain access to the right information or the right place to find the answers to their questions.

Chief executive of COTA WA, Ken Marston, said the service arose partly in response to a lengthy process of consultations undertaken in Western Australia about state retirement village legislation.

“That process found that people were concerned about various aspects of retirement village life and some were quite poorly informed when they went into that decision.  So education and information about seniors housing choices was highlighted as something that could be improved.”

“Housing is incredibly complex.  People will increasingly move from one form of housing to another at later life, particularly with increased longevity, and they need education about the options – from terms of tenure, residential care, downsizing, or even living in their own home.  There are social, legal and financial implications with all these decisions.”

Mr Marsden said the Seniors Housing Service had two primary functions – firstly to educate and assist people in making good, informed decisions about their housing future in a very complex environment; and secondly to address the different problems and issues that can arise with the choices people make.

“They come to us with problems and we either solve them if we can, or if we can’t, we refer them to someone who can.

“Most of the traffic to date – about 30 per cent – is with retirement villages and difficulties people experience within them or questions about different forms of tenure.  

The second biggest area would be residential parks – people living in long stay caravans and mobile or demountable homes.  

“We have an act of parliament around that but security of tenure is an issue for them.  One problem is that people don’t own the land and the value of a demountable home depreciates over time.  So their investment diminishes.  And then they go to sell and they get less money than they need to replace their home.

“Seniors housing is a growing area of concern. People can get locked into housing decisions that can take them nowhere at all.  And people who are boarders and lodgers are also quite vulnerable. It’s the people with no money and few assets,” Mr Marsden said.

Mr Marsten said WA was experiencing severe housing pressures, in public housing as well as private rentals.

“The landscape is changing.  Many seniors who are retiring are not home owners. Also there has been much more divorce, which leads to less financial security. We have around 3,000 seniors on the public housing waiting list. And for very small, ordinary housing options in Perth, the average rental is 400 a week.” 

Mr Marston said that while services such as the Seniors Housing Service would obviously have a relationship with the Seniors Gateway, proposed as part of the Productivity Commission’s aged care reform recommendations, it offered a different service, limited only to housing and not to any other aged care related services.

The service is currently staffed by two officers – an information officer based in the office, speaking to people face to face or by phone and email; as well as a community education officer whose job is to go out into the community and talk to groups.

Initially established by the WA Department of Commerce in September last year as a consumer protection initiative, the service continues to be sponsored by the WA Government but in partnership with COTA WA which was successful in winning the tender to operate the service day to day. The tender entitles COTA WA to operate the service until September 2013.

Tags: cota, cotawa, housing, ken-marsten, retirement-villages, seniors housing, wa-department-of-commerce, wa-state-government,

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