Rent-Free Housing For Students At Senior Acres In The Netherlands
Smart idea -- giving students free rent in a senior living facility in exchange for spending 30 hours a month acting as "good neighbors" to the seniors around them.
Carey Reed writes at The Rundown about this project, aimed at warding off the negative effects of aging.:
Officials at the nursing home say students do a variety of activities with the older residents, including watching sports, celebrating birthdays and, perhaps most importantly, offering company when seniors fall ill, which helps stave off feelings of disconnectedness.Both social isolation and loneliness in older men and women are associated with increased mortality, according to a 2012 report by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
"The students bring the outside world in, there is lots of warmth in the contact," Sijpkes said.
Six students from area universities Saxion and Windesheim share the building with approximately 160 seniors. They are allowed to come and go as they please, as long as they follow one rule: Do not be a nuisance to the elderly.
Sijpkes joked that this is not difficult for the younger residents, especially since most of the older people living at the home are hard of hearing.
Via @VPostrel, who's been "proposing this for years, but also with artists."
"proposing this for years, but also with artists."
Does she want students living with artists or artists living with seniors?
dee nile at April 14, 2015 4:37 AM
So, in other words, they are trying to recreate a family type living situation for these senior citizens at government expense, rather than just doing it the old fashioned way, by having their own families care for their aging parents, and grandparents,
If these elderly people have no family members, it is a pretty good thing, but if they do, the welfare system is reinventing the wheel, all in the name of keeping the tax slaves with their nose to the grindstone.
Isab at April 14, 2015 8:45 AM
"No kids? But who will look after you when you're old?"
"Kind college students, apparently."
Kevin at April 14, 2015 1:19 PM
Vaguely remembering something similar, I want to say in a post ww2 Asia they were putting the orphanage and retirement home together, because so many of those in between had died.
Joe J at April 14, 2015 3:57 PM
There's no indication that this is a government-run home. Any nursing home, private or public could try this idea.
My grandmother spent her last years in a nursing home. With Alzheimers, there really wasn't any other sensible solution. Family visited pretty regularly, but that still only covers a tiny portion of her time. The staff was fine, but they have jobs to do, and not really time to just "be".
Having students around, just living normal life, is already a huge plus. Add in the obligation to take 30 hours a month and actually interact with these lonely people - what's not to like?
a_random_guy at April 15, 2015 3:22 AM
"No indication that this is a government-run home. Any nursing home, private or public could try this idea."
The Netherlands is socialized to the teeth. I assume it is government run until establised otherwise.
No privately run nursing home can afford to fill apartments with students rather than paying residents. The math doesn't work.
Isab at April 15, 2015 9:03 AM
So, in other words, they are trying to recreate a family type living situation for these senior citizens at government expense, rather than just doing it the old fashioned way, by having their own families care for their aging parents, and grandparents,
Posted by: Isab at April 14, 2015 8:45 AM
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You mean, "by having housewives care for their aging parents and in-laws."
Or, maybe, all the younger nieces and female cousins who conveniently lived near by and never had to move away. (Really? What about pioneers?)
Times have changed. Being a housewife was never a guarantee that your loving spouse wouldn't suddenly become crippled or die prematurely - and thus put you in dire straits. That's just one reason there are fewer housewives now. I'm also guessing that plenty of 19th-century housewives - such as farmers' wives - didn't really have time to look after relatives with Alzheimer's, as opposed to bedridden invalids - if they even had time for THEM. Not to mention that people often died before their 70s, so their children and grandchildren didn't necessarily have to care for them very long anyway. Twenty years of caring for an Alzheimer's patient is another matter altogether, as a_random_guy helpfully implied.
lenona at April 15, 2015 12:33 PM
You mean, "by having housewives care for their aging parents and in-laws."
The duties in my family go to whoever has the flexibility to do it.
My husband has quite often taken leave so he could take care of my mother, when she was ill, and I had something critical at work.
Not everyone is a two earner couple marching lockstep with a government approved brief case and shoving their family members off into government run old age homes so Medicaid will pick up the bill. Lenona. .
When I was a child, my father ran his business at home, while my mother went to work as a school administrator. And yes, he was the one taking care of me, and his parents, when they needed help.
If you bothered to pay attention you will find a goodly number of men, taking far better care of both their parents and their children than you could ever expect from some housewife or government drone.
A very good friend of mine, quit his job, and spent the last six months of his father's life at the house, in the end doing everything for his bed ridden father.
His mother just could not emotionally handle it.
Right now, because I have the flexibility to take care of my mother, it is like having a tax free seven thousand dollar a month job. ( because that is what it would cost us as a family to put her into assisted living and have some twenty buck an hour nursing home assistant do it) with no guarantees that she was not being abused, or neglected.
Isab at April 15, 2015 4:45 PM
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