COTA SA welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the State Planning Commission’s Future Living Code Amendment Consultation.
Housing for older people
COTA SA cares greatly about ageing well and is committed to ensuring older South Australians have the opportunity, capacity and ability to navigate the changes of ageing in their homes and communities of choice. The development of planning and housing strategies provide an opportunity to deliberately plan to support South Australians to age well, now and into the future.
Secure and well-located housing plays a critical role in the health and wellbeing of older South Australians, but a variety of factors mean that it is rapidly moving out of reach for an increasing cohort. Home ownership is gradually decreasing among those approaching retirement, falling from 80% to 72% for those aged 50-54 since 1996. On current trends, home ownership for over-65s will decline to 57% by 2056. A recent study found evidence to suggest that ‘challenging housing circumstances negatively affect health through faster biological ageing’. The study further found that the reversible nature of biological ageing means that there is significant potential for housing and planning policies to improve health outcomes.
Responding to the Amendment
COTA SA has contributed to many strategies, papers and plans that consider the importance of affordable, adaptable, accessible and safe housing. These include the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan3, the 20-year Infrastructure Strategy4 and the Housing Security for Older Women Taskforce, which in 2023 delivered a paper with over 40 recommendations on how to address housing insecurity for older women5.
As noted in the Future Living Code Amendment (the Amendment) documentation, most older people want to age in place and stay in their own homes and chosen communities as they age. To achieve this, housing should be affordable, adaptable, accessible and close to amenities. It is important this does not preclude older people making a choice on the type of housing they can live in. Like older people themselves who are diverse in their lifestyle preferences, incomes, identity, cultural background and relationships, there is no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to our housing needs as we age. It is crucial that older people can choose the type of housing that is right for their needs, yet there is often little opportunity to move within one’s existing familiar community, especially if looking to downsize/ rightsize.
The Amendment opens possibilities to older people who may be either (a) in a larger home and willing to sub-divide for co-living; or (b) looking for a smaller property in their existing (largely ‘quarter acre block’) suburb. COTA SA is strongly in support of the Amendment and recommends that the Planning Commission consider the following additional points in order for the Code to support more older South Australians to benefit from these Amendments:
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