This is interesting… As previously mentioned, TRM (Tongariro River Motel) are still waiting in anticipation for Taupo Council’s resource approval for our cohousing proposal to eventually replace the sixty year old motel. We now have a list of prospective residents who have registered their interests. So far it looks most promising. Many have compared TRM’s proposal to a compact retirement village concept and welcomed the many advantages, designed to overcome all the ownership tenure issues that feature in the following Dominion article.

Thank you to Janet Wilson for her excellent perceptive review of retirement village ownership tenure issues in the Dominion on Saturday 8 April:

“OPINION: Riddle me this; why would you agree to a property contract that costs you hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, to purchase, which doesn’t give you ownership, but a right to occupy, but you must still pay for the property’s maintenance and upkeep?

Then, when you decide to move on you don’t receive the capital value of what the property is worth, but usually 20%-30% less while you’re still often forced to pay operating costs for sometimes months, if not years, while you wait interminably for the property to sell.

Yet nearly 50,000 Kiwis have signed contracts like it to live in one of the more than 425 retirement villages around the country, making the companies that write those contracts worth billions.”

Then Janet Wilson goes on to suggest they “effectively farm old people, while claiming to help mollify that scourge of old age, loneliness, by enticing prospective clients with blandishments that they can easily get into the on-site hospital when their time nears.”

The review finishes up her article with the sad truth:

“Far from providing the peace of mind for the elderly which operators espouse, retirement villages condemn their aged residents to financial uncertainty and stress enabled by a weak regulatory framework. Having made their contribution, we reward them with financial abuse and disrespect.”

OK! So TRM’s version is to firstly remove all age barriers. Then that financial uncertainty and stressful tenure situation is addressed and corrected in a mutually advantageous cohousing framework where village residents make their own rules to enhance and manage their lives to enjoy their own future capital profits. It has to be a far better solution.

Below is the architect’s sketch of the proposed “common house” jointly owned by residents, similar to a village centre of a retirement village. TRM (Tongariro River Mews!) does not need other amenities (that retirement villages use to entice prospective residents) as they are already in place – i.e. a bowling club is located directly across the road (see aerial photo above), various parks and reserves and riverside walking tracks are adjoining, a comprehensive medical centre and library and heated swimming pool complex are within close level walking distance, etc…

Traditional forms of housing fail to address the needs of so many people. Dramatic demographic and economic changes have happened but housing developers have generally ignored them. Housing, public and private, is pretty much the same everywhere, boring and rather terrible.

As Janet Wilson suggests, retirement villages are really designed to farm the elderly. A better solution is a cohousing alternative. Cohousing was pioneered in Denmark over three decades ago with hundreds of developments following in USA, Canada and more recently in Australia. NZ has been very slow to recognise the advantages. Few people understand it. So if you wish to learn more about cohousing in the future, then call into TRM at reception.