Residential, transitional housing for elderly in the works

The National Assistance Board (NAB) is spending close to $3 million on two facilities to provide residential and transitional housing for some of the island’s elderly.

Acting Director Colleen Walcott, speaking in the Lower House on Wednesday, made the disclosure as she said the lack of housing for senior citizens continues to be a major issue for the NAB.

“But what we have done [is] that we have looked internally and we have started with our own facilities at the National Assistance Board – a residential facility at the Vauxhall Senior Citizens Village housing 35 people and Lancaster houses a transitional facility for persons who have been displaced.

“[At] those two facilities, works have started and are progressing to the tune of some $2.9 million, and we expect that in the next financial year that those facilities would have been completed,” Walcott disclosed.

However, the senior NAB official stressed that the mindset of the general public had to change to deliver more sustainable support for elderly citizens.

“The aim, really, in all of this is to keep older persons right in their communities unless they are acutely ill and they need medical management. To do that, you have to take the services to the community…we have to work very closely with families,” she said.

“A lot of these issues that we are encountering with the elderly have to be fixed. Not all will be done at the level of the state, and we have to change that mindset that as persons get older, families relinquish that responsibility and place persons who have contributed so much to the country strictly on the state.”

Meanwhile, Minister of State in the Office of the Attorney General with responsibility for Crime Prevention, Corey Lane added that the Ministry of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs was also seeking to alleviate much of the bottleneck experienced by persons seeking housing solutions when they visit the Welfare Department.

Though he reiterated that the department itself does not provide housing, a new housing programme was in the works where escrow agents who are typically associated with selling or buying real estate, will be used to help persons find accommodation in their time of need.

“What we have worked on so far is putting together that Social Welfare Housing Programme. The Minister mentioned that the welfare does not have a person responsible for going out there and looking for these houses or have persons with these qualifications.

“What this programme would allow us to do is to have these landlord agents who are more familiar with real estate, familiar with housing, do the assessment of the housing to ensure that it is suitable for the persons that we would be looking to temporarily house,” Lane explained.

(SB)