Senior co-housing as a window on post-traditional ageing

Housing options for older people in the UK until now have been rather limited to remaining living ‘independently’ in one's own home (accounting for the overwhelming majority of people over 65; Adams and Hodges, Reference Adams and Hodges2018) and some variant of institutionally provided, pre-established retirement housing such as retirement communities, extra-care or sheltered housing. Residential and nursing care are further options, but tend to be seen as a last resort (Higgs and Gilleard, Reference Higgs and Gilleard2015). Senior co-housing, however, has the potential to collapse this binary later-life housing choice (independent living versus joining some pre-established community) and improve wellbeing, by introducing a third model – intentional, collaborative and bottom-up co-housing with informal forms of mutual aid at its core (Durrett, Reference Durrett2009; Glass, Reference Glass2012, Reference Glass2013; Grinde et al., Reference Grinde, Bang Nes, MacDonald and Sloan Wilson2018).

In general, the UK is said to lag behind other European countries, notably Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and France, in offering more imaginative housing and living options for later life (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2009; Shafique, Reference Shafique2018; LaFond and Tsvetkova, Reference LaFond and Tsvetkova2017). Communities like New Ground, although long spoken of (Brenton, Reference Brenton1999), have been slow to emerge, because of: a cultural aversion to the ‘reconfiguring of individual dwelling norms’ (Jarvis, Reference Jarvis2011: 560) that co-housing entails; sexism (Vestbro and Horelli, Reference Vestbro and Horelli2012; Jarvis, Reference Jarvis2014); and the sheer cost and difficulty of getting such projects off the ground within the context of the UK housing economy (Jarvis et al., Reference Jarvis, Scanlon and Fernández Arrigoitia2016; see also Fernández and Scanlon, Reference Fernández, Scanlon, Benson and Hamiduddin2017). The women of OWCH also faced these hurdles, as we will show.

The promise and the intention of senior co-housing's advocates, and of the women of OWCH, is that co-housing should be more than simply well co-designed, age-friendly physical space, important though that also is in the establishment of these spaces (Cooper, Reference Cooper2000; Williams, Reference Williams2005; Sargisson, Reference Sargisson, Bradley and Hedren2014; Devlin et al., Reference Devlin, Douglas and Reynolds2015; Fernández Arrigoitia and Scanlon, Reference Fernández Arrigoitia and Scanlon2015, Fernández and Scanlon, Reference Fernández, Scanlon, Benson and Hamiduddin2017; Ruiu, Reference Ruiu2017). New Ground aims to be a new way of socially inclusive and mutually supportive shared living, capable of buffering the physical and emotional challenges of later life. The risk that it will fall short in achieving these aims is, however, ever present. As commentators of co-housing in general have observed, sharing and mutuality can conflict with the protection of private space (Jarvis, Reference Jarvis2015). Co-housing requires learning to manage the conflicts that can result from the messy boundaries between individual and collective life, as well as engaging in forms of informal care alongside formal support (Labit and Dubost, Reference Labit and Dubost2016). There is also the risk that such communities are the reserve of the privileged (Blanchard, Reference Blanchard2013; LaFond and Tsvetkova, Reference LaFond and Tsvetkova2017) and the ‘secession of the successful’ (Cashin, Reference Cashin2001; Chiodelli and Baglione, Reference Chiodelli and Baglione2014) from the mainstream. Establishing the principles of inclusion and diversity is not just about incorporating people with different lifestyles, financial resources and access to housing markets, but also about integrating ‘all manifestations of heterogeneity’, including gender and sexual orientation, disability, migration experiences, religious practices, relationships, family forms and more (Droste and Komorek, Reference Droste, Komorek, LaFond and Tsvetkova2017: 28), as well as encouraging interaction with adjoining neighbourhoods (Hamiduddin and Gallent, Reference Hamiduddin and Gallent2016). These are social, political and economic challenges to be addressed at all stages of development, while taking differences in power and positionality seriously (Tummers and MacGregor, Reference Tummers and MacGregor2019). They form part of relevant class-based critiques which we have encountered in presenting our early findings at academic conferences and it is an issue to which we will return in the analysis below.

Of considerable interest in this social experiment is whether New Ground heralds a new model of living with the potential to defy the impulse to reflexive individualism characteristic of ‘post-traditional’ ageing (Giddens, Reference Giddens1991; Katz, Reference Katz2013) or the solipsistic consumerism that has come to be associated with the particular post-war ‘third age’ generational cohort (Gilleard and Higgs, Reference Gilleard and Higgs2005, Reference Gilleard and Higgs2013). On the one hand, the women embrace the norms of interdependence, collectivism and the development of systems of mutual support in negotiating the challenges of later life. On the other hand, they are also potentially subject to the imperatives of ‘successful ageing’ – being active (Katz, Reference Katz2000) so as to avoid physical decline and dependency on family and institutional care, and engaging in embodied practices of differentiation and distinction (Gilleard and Higgs, Reference Gilleard and Higgs2005) to preserve social relevance in a youth-obsessed society. Under the weight of such socio-cultural expectations of individual identity and risk management, there are no guarantees that age-segregated communities are any less ‘age-denying spatial orders’ (Katz and McHugh, Reference Katz, McHugh, Cole, Ray and Kastenbaum2010: 271) than age-integrated environments, as authors such as Katz and McHugh (Reference Katz, McHugh, Cole, Ray and Kastenbaum2010) have observed in the context of North American retirement communities and others in the context of extra-care retirement communities in the UK (Biggs et al., Reference Biggs, Bernard, Kingston and Nettleton2000; West et al., Reference West, Shaw, Hagger and Holland2017).

Against this theoretical background, and drawing on the data collected in the phase prior to moving in and in the first 18 months of living in New Ground, we explore whether New Ground is a social experiment that can carry beyond these particularly committed 26 women. Does it point the way to a new model of shared living, governed by interdependence and mutuality, or is it simply an elaborate life-style arrangement, ‘based on the calculation of risks and insurential logics’? (Katz, Reference Katz2013: 37). To what extent is it shaped in and by neoliberal discourses of autonomy, choice and self-sufficiency? Although the considerable media attention and episodic commentaries on OWCH may give the impression that it is a community that has been researched to the point of exhaustion, in fact it has hardly been researched at all in any sustained and meaningful way. What we present is only a brief snapshot and insight into a much more complex and unfolding reality. Without sustained longitudinal analysis, we cannot draw definitive conclusions, but we can begin to flag its promises and pitfalls.

The paper proceeds as follows. First we set out our methodology. We then give a brief description of the origins and history of the OWCH and New Ground community an overview of the socio-economic and health characteristics, as well as the family and working backgrounds of some of its residents. We then go on to draw out what seemed to us, and to the women themselves, important themes: the negotiation of values; dealing with difference; mutual aid, care and love; and attitudes towards age and ageing. We draw these themes together in a discussion section in which we reflect on the challenges and tensions inherent to this new way of living in later life. In the final concluding section we offer some tentative reflections on the more theoretical questions posed above.

OWCH and the development of New Ground

The OWCH women describe their co-housing community as:

The original concept of later-life co-housing in the UK was the brainchild of Maria Brenton, herself a founder member and facilitator of OWCH, following a study tour of co-housing in the Netherlands (Brenton, Reference Brenton1999). The idea was enthusiastically taken up in 1988 by six women living across different London boroughs including Madeleine Levius, who died in 2005, and Shirley Meredeen, now a resident of New Ground and, in fact, the only resident founder member (aged 88). Other many hundreds of members, sharing an interest in building a community of mutually supportive co-dwellers, have come and gone through its 18-year development history. All current residents are members of OWCH, some long-standing and others more recent. Of the 26 women who moved in, six had been members between ten and 18 years; eight between five and nine years; and ten between one and four years and two for less than one year. There is also an active list of non-resident members who have an interest in future openings of New Ground apartments, but also in some of the social activities (e.g. gardening or museum outings) in which the women are involved. They secure their ‘waiting list’ status by participating in community activities and coming to some invited meetings.

Many of the longer-standing residents had a history of activism and involvement in social movements, including feminism, housing activism in squats and co-operatives, in the trade union movement and the Greater London Council, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the environmental movement and the arts. These diverse forms of social engagement reflect the profile of women senior co-housers in Europe (Labit, Reference Labit2015). Although many of the founding women might be described as ‘cultural creatives’ (Blanchard, Reference Blanchard2013) and with financial capital often locked in their home equity, they were cultural creatives with a firmly socially inclusive sensibility. The original OWCH members wanted to include women without housing equity. From the beginning, they developed a partnership with the Director of a small housing association, Housing for Women, who offered to help the group achieve its aims and eventually went on to sublet eight of the 25 dwellings on a social rented basis, following a capital grant given by the Tudor TrustFootnote ⁵ in 2010. Indeed, it was that guiding principle of social inclusion through mixed tenure that partly accounts for the protracted period of development of the New Ground site as it required a developer housing association in a period when public capital to support social housing was dwindling (Brenton, Reference Brenton2017). Even though many housing associations did ‘dabble’ with the OWCH initiative, none sustained their interest.

A further factor in hindering the establishment of a senior co-housing community was Britain's ageism and dominant paternalist culture towards the aged (Brenton, Reference Brenton2013; Buffel et al., Reference Buffel, Handler and Phillipson2019). Developers and housing associations appeared unable to listen to and work creatively with older people (Brenton, Reference Brenton2017), and particularly older women. Local authorities tended to see the scheme as a potential drain on public care finances, rather than an example of improved co-care and healthier older living. After a number of development sites had fallen through, often because of unaffordable London land prices, a suitable site in Barnet, North London was eventually found and purchased on behalf of the women by the Hanover Housing Association in 2010. Hanover became the group's developer and provided the initial capital for the site's development. Permission to build was not, however, forthcoming until 2013. During this time, the OWCH women spent a great deal of time explaining the idea of co-housing to local authority planning officers and councillors. Once they were persuaded of its potential health and wellbeing benefits, planning permission was eventually granted. New Ground, as it came to be known, was completed towards the end of 2016 when the women began to move in.

New Ground is not a shared economy model in the sense of pooling all resources, although the women do hold a common savings pot for discretionary (and anonymised) emergency help to individuals should the need arise. Rather, as is typical of co-housing, it is founded on the principle of private property with shared space. The women themselves undertake all management and administration of the shared areas, as well as their own private apartments.

New Ground consists of 17 private leasehold apartments of between one and three bedrooms, ranging in price between £269,000 and £440,000 (expensive by national standards, but not especially expensive for London). There are a further eight socially rented apartments, all owned and managed by Housing for Women, and five of these are located on the same floor (rather than being more evenly distributed) due to planning requirements. There is also a common room, a laundry, a guest suite and a large shared garden.

There are currently over 18 working groups, covering things like bulk buying, gardening, exercise classes, the Madeleine (founder) Fund, guest room and many more. These sub-groups were more numerous before moving in, when development issues ranged from site-finding, governance and membership to finance, communications and social inclusivity. These have intentionally been cut down to fit more closely to everyday needs without becoming overwhelming in terms of time and energy. An elected Management Committee continues to meet monthly and, in the spirit of non-hierarchical leadership, has time-limited (annual) positions.

Residents’ characteristics and backgrounds

There are 26 women, who, apart from one co-habiting couple, are single and are, at the time of writing, between the ages of 52 and 89. Of the 26 who moved in, 16 are now over 70 (of those, six are over 80), three are in their fifties and seven in their sixties. Our survey revealed considerable socio-economic diversity amongst those who responded. Of the 15, eight are divorced or separated, and two are widowed; the remaining three, aside from the one co-habiting couple, are either separated or never married. Eleven out of 14 respondents are retired, three are in part-time work and another is in full-time employment. Annual household income (including pension income) varies considerably, between those having between £40,000 and £50,000 and those with between £10,000 and £20,000. The vast majority (11 out of 14) have less than £20,000 per year. Of those, some (social tenants) are still paying rents. Only a third of the women who responded to the survey owned their properties outright prior to the move to New Ground. The overwhelming majority (11) rated their health as good or very good, but, interestingly, most of these (ten) also said that their day-to-day activities were somewhat or very limited because of a health problem or disability which had lasted, or was expected to last, at least 12 months. A number of women had developed health issues (physical and mental) on moving in, including, as we have learned more recently, three cancer diagnoses.

Some of the women have enjoyed what many would deem to be the privileged lives of women with professional status in their own right (as, for example, entrepreneurs, medics, artists, publishers and educators). Others hail from distinctly less-privileged circumstances. Sandra's experience as a daughter and young mother is indicative here. Her childhood, which was spent in cramped living quarters alongside two siblings, was very difficult because of the experience of living with a mother with severe mental health issues. Amidst that ‘desperate’ circumstance, she became a young unmarried mother to a son with learning difficulties, and later married (and eventually divorced) someone who was not kind to her son while also mistreating her emotionally and financially.

Others, who on the face of it appear to have enjoyed greater privilege, or lack of hardship, have, as single mothers, also experienced significant financial strain and precarious housing conditions. The example of Denise is illustrative here. Denise, an artist, was divorced as a young mother and had brought up children in unstable housing situations, eventually renting accommodation with a housing association. Once her children had left home, she had no wider family to rely on and did not want to think of a life living on her own. She heard about OWCH on the radio:

Both Sandra and Denise have benefited from the availability of social rented apartments in New Ground alongside the personal support and flexible attitude of certain individuals working with the scheme (like Maria Brenton or the then Development Director for Housing for Women). For others, soaring housing price inflation has enabled them to buy an apartment, but they are not necessarily otherwise capital rich. Nonetheless, income disparity, although inherent to any mixed-tenure development, is arguably compounded in a senior development, in the sense that income levels are fixed for the majority who are retired from employment (Ota, Reference Ota2015; Savills, 2015; Wood and Vibert, Reference Wood and Vibert2017). Its potential to divide the community is something of which the women are very well aware, open about and seek to guard against, as the following focus group excerpt indicates:

What is notable here is that this is not a homogenously privileged and wealthy community as is often presumed of co-housing. What complicates the picture is that within and across the income and tenure divides, there are meaningful differences but also commonalities in education, housing histories and health status divides. Often, these had to do with age and gender. For example, many are old enough to have lived at a time when secretarial training was an almost de facto choice for those pursuing higher education, and mortgages were denied to (or made difficult for) women irrespective of their income. As we will discuss further in the paper, the income disparity that comes with a mixed-tenure arrangement is an ongoing challenge to community life, but social inclusion is a central value of OWCH and New Ground which the group continues to work on by reviewing internal allocation criteria and policies, and revisiting issues of social diversity through working groups.

What is also noteworthy is that none of the women, except one, have any prior experience of co-housing (in a strict sense). They have either lived with partners or spouses or have lived alone. Adjustment from individual dwelling to shared living with only women at later lifestages, when there are other important life transitions such as retirement, declining health or loss of life-long partners, can be a considerable challenge, as we will discuss, but again, to note for now, this fact overturns another myth about co-housing that we have encountered in presenting this research, namely that co-housing is a form of later-life housing suited only to those with a history of, or prior commitment to, co-operative forms of living.

Upholding and negotiating values

As has been amply noted by commentators of other intentional communities, a great deal of emphasis is generally placed in co-housing on establishing and promulgating appropriate values by which to forge a collective identity. The prolonged planning period enabled the women to think through and design the minute detail of its eventual ‘social architecture’ (Jarvis, Reference Jarvis2015). In the estimation of one long-standing member of OWCH, the fact that New Ground had taken so long is a feature of the group's success:

It is a requirement that all residents first become members of OWCH and there is a selection process, which consists of ensuring that residents understand, and are willing to live by, OWCH's core values, which are formally given as: acceptance and respect for diversity; care and support for each other; providing a balance between privacy and community; countering ageist stereotypes; co-operating and sharing responsibility; maintaining a structure without hierarchy; caring for the environment; and being part of the wider community.Footnote ⁶

One of the women described her experience of the selection process in a pre-move interview:

Subscribing to this ‘ethics of co-housing’ – self-organisation, pulling one's weight, and balancing individual and collective interests – is a key element of being a resident of New Ground, but developing this social architecture takes time and there can be temporal tensions (Jarvis, Reference Jarvis2011) in play as founder, or long-standing, members of a community take on the guardianship and promulgation of founding values, to which newer members are less committed and/or need more time to absorb and adjust to, or indeed challenge. This raises important questions, for all co-housing, about the mechanisms through which power becomes embedded in radical communities that seek to counteract dominant or normative visions through everyday practice.

For the OWCH women, it could be said that something like a feminist ethics of care (Held, Reference Held2006; Milligan and Wiles, Reference Milligan and Wiles2010; Fraser, Reference Fraser2016) is the underpinning value of its founders (see also the ‘Mutual aid, care and love’ section below), yet what is striking is that while being female is a precondition for individual entry into this gender-exclusive community, only three of the interviewed women were originally looking for a women's-only space in which to live; New Ground just happened to be the only senior co-housing on offer in London at the time. Some were actually put off by the idea initially but, with time, came to see this as a very important component of what their community is and how it does things. Emma describes this in the following way:

Indeed, many of the women spoke to this ‘shadow’ through their lived experience – be it at work or in the more personal realm – where men had wielded power over them. As Gretchen and Karina commented during interviews, this was something that, by being a women-only community, they could finally avoid:

Of course, theirs is also a community of continuous negotiations, as we describe further below, but Karina's comment above relates to freedom from a more contentious form of scripted gendered relations in public and private space that still puts men at the centre of power structures. Theirs is a community that values co-operation and they feel that, as women, they can do that more successfully.

A further example of learning shared values is that of sustainability and caring for the environment, as noted, another core OWCH value. This theme was explored in the first round of interviews and emerged in one of the focus group discussions. While most acknowledged that sustainability was a core value for co-housing in general and were happy to abide by policies like car sharing and recycling, there was a difference of opinion among the women as to how far ecological sustainability was either a personal guiding value or central to the development of New Ground – a finding echoed in other studies on the links between co-housing and sustainability (Torres-Antonini, Reference Torres-Antonini2001; Marckmann et al., Reference Marckmann, Gram-Hanssen and Christensen2012). For some, green values had been a core aspect of their lives long before moving there. Others expressed anxiety that they did not know as much about sustainability as they felt they ought to, particularly among the newer adherents, as the following interview excerpt illustrates:

What this participant seems to be communicating is a sense of fear of displaying the wrong values or of not having enough knowledge of those values, but, balanced against this, also a sense of prevailing pragmatism, wherein an openness and willingness to learn through doing is thought to trump prior beliefs and knowledge. There is also a strong hint here that newer members, like her, are not merely value takers, but also value shapers, evident in the phrase ‘that's [i.e. a learning community] what we should be’. Longer-standing members, for their part, are aware that overly rigid adherence to values can thwart the growth of the collective:

This sense of pragmatism also emerged in discussions around succession plans, in which an explicit aim is to prioritise the recruitment of relatively young members in the interest of maintaining a sustainable and balanced community, based on age. It is also evident in the way in which the difference in financial circumstances of the women is handled.

Forging bonds in a context of difference

As noted, New Ground is founded on the principle of private property (owned outright or socially rented) with shared space. In an effort to keep collective costs down, and partly in order to reinforce values of equal participation, the women had originally taken the decision that all cleaning of common areas – common room and kitchen, stairs, hallways and lift, etc. – was to be shared. This changed as the reality of these tasks became too burdensome, and a bi-annual deep clean of collective spaces is now managed by Hallmark, a property management company, but strictly under their supervision. It is covered by a maintenance charge that varies according to flat size (a two-bed, for example, is about £1,600 per year).

In one of the early focus group, the group's decision to self-clean these common areas arose. This is worth recounting in some detail, as it is indicative of the way in which the women are seeking to establish bonds at the same time as dealing with the potentially divisive issue of differential financial resources. The conversation involves three of the women, Maureen, Joanne and Penny. Maureen reflects on the fact that one or two of the women, who ‘have had cleaners for years’, were initially reluctant to take on the cleaning of common areas and had suggested that their paid cleaner do her cleaning on her behalf. What emerged from the discussion was that over a period, the women had come to accept the importance of equal participation in the cleaning of common areas. We pick up the conversation at the point where Penny, who herself has also been unused to doing her own cleaning, comments on how she has come to accept the value of this shared activity:

A number of features are noteworthy here. First, the women do not seek to deny or conceal their differences. There is some implicit negative appraisal on Maureen's part of those who have never done their own cleaning, but this is diffused by Joanne's (a long-standing member of OWCH) judicious intervention, reinforcing to the group that ‘it is good’ both for better individual health and for the health of the collective. Humour and self-mockery (Penny) is also very much characteristic of the women's interactions; a way of gently levelling down and facing up to the trade-offs and compromises of co-housing. The act of collective cleaning itself has become an important symbol of solidarity and equality, and of the ‘no passengers’ ethos of the group. As an activity that is not of equal liking to all, it is a sphere of action that keeps the negotiation of differences alive and fluid. Barring physical impediments, everyone is expected to participate, which is not, however, true of the communal (and very large) garden, whose upkeep is designated to a gardening group, membership of which is voluntary.

As is typical of co-housing, there is a regular community meal, prepared in the common kitchen. Originally scheduled to take place once a week, this was reduced to once a fortnight (and later reactivated into a weekly schedule). Again, this is an important aspect of community building. Attendance is expected although not mandatory. In focus group discussion, it was noted with sharp disapproval that some of the women had given priority to external engagements over attendance of the common meal. A reminder, again, of the ever-present tension or ‘delicate balance’ (Labit and Dubost, Reference Labit and Dubost2016: 51) between individual and collective, internal and external interests – something which in Sweden has been theorised as Bund: a third social relationship, beyond Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaf (Sandstedt and Westin, Reference Sandstedt and Westin2015). Again, in the spirit of respect for difference, the women took the decision early on that rather than insist that each take the responsibility in rotation for the preparation of an entire meal, the women could choose whether to take on a lead or a supporting role. Some women felt more confident than others in taking on a directing role, but, those who were less confident, but keen to learn, felt that they would be supported and encouraged. This was also evident when it came to the pursuit of collective art and craft activities, for which some of the women have particular talents and even professional expertise. The following quotation from an interview with Sandra neatly summarises the possibilities for the expansion of horizons that New Ground can afford:

For Penny, it was a case of levelling down and compromising on what she had previously come to expect of a lifestyle in retirement. Sandra, on the other hand, regards moving to New Ground as levelling up, acquiring skills and taking opportunities in this late period of her life that were never open to her before. For both, living with different models of home-making and keeping in a co-housing scheme has enriched their sense of self because of the learning inherent to this collective experience.

Mutual aid, care and love

The availability of mutual aid and support among co-residents that would supplant or complement family or institutional support is an attractive feature of this kind of housing across Europe (Choi, Reference Choi2004; Bamford, Reference Bamford2005; Droste, Reference Droste2015; Labit, Reference Labit2015), with some notable cases in long-established German intergenerational projects (Borgloh and Westerheide, Reference Borgloh and Westerheide2012; Labit and Dubost, Reference Labit and Dubost2016) as well as in the United States of America (USA) (Glass, Reference Glass2013; Glass and Vander Plaats, Reference Glass and Vander Plaats2013; Markle et al., Reference Markle, Rodgers, Sanchez and Ballou2015) and Australia (Forbes, Reference Forbes2002), and for men as well as women. Mutual support is a significant and highly prized feature of New Ground and the women offered numerous examples of what they termed ‘OWCH in action’, e.g. preparing meals for each other during periods of ill-health, driving each other to hospital appointments and organising visiting rotas for residents in hospital. However, this by no means implies that all needs can be met in this way. Indeed, the women have coined the phrase ‘we don't look after each other, we look out for each other’ in an effort to delimit the boundaries of mutual aid and the ‘care’ more typically associated with family members or formal, paid care services. However, while this rhetoric acts as a useful reminder that there are limits, in practice the boundaries are much harder to define and, over time, may well become even more so. In Clara's words below, we see how this line between individual and collective care is far from clear, and in a kind of constant practice-driven negotiation:

In practical terms, they have all agreed to sign a Power of Attorney (POA), as one interviewee noted, ‘for precisely that reason that OWCH cannot be and will not be responsible for the health and financial decision of the individual’. POAs, here, act as a kind of legal boundary device that demarcates the extent of their responsibility for one another. But, in contrast to this official device, the term ‘love’ was used unselfconsciously in focus group discussions in reference to how they felt about each other and the supportive environment in general was described as ‘a fountain of love’. This kind of language transcends formal legal discourse and is suggestive of deeper attachments and commitments than merely ‘looking out for each other’.

This is, of course, not to suggest that everyone loves everyone else. Indeed, the women were often explicit that loving everyone was not possible and that some friendships were very much stronger than others. Some even admitted to, on occasion, having similar feelings as playground rejection in childhood. The women were very open about their ongoing collective and personal struggles to find a sense of equilibrium – between commitment to the community and daily labour of maintaining New Ground and their external family and friends; between neighbourly and social interaction and the need for solitude. One of the women described this as ‘coping with double streams’. The idea that New Ground is some sort of ‘paradise’ or ‘utopia’, as often characterised by commentators, was met with irritation. This was regarded as a lazy denial of the real and continuous labour involved in achieving a sense of community and loving support among non-kin co-dwellers. Would-be residents and visitors who consider New Ground as a ready-made retirement community for relaxation and care are not suffered gladly, as the quotation from the interview with Sandra mentioned earlier well demonstrates. New Ground can be a ‘fountain of love’ and support through the travails of later life, but it is far from a free ride.

Attitudes towards age and ageing

In the pre-move interviews, the women expressed a variety of motivations for becoming involved in OWCH and eventually moving into New Ground. What was also frequently expressed amongst those who were mothers, however, was a strong wish not to become a burden on children, particularly among those who had had experience of caring for their own mothers. In the words of Maureen and Pamela:

Or, in the words of Joanne:

Negative experiences of arranging care for ageing parents combined with a strong will to avoid the passive delegation of care to children were strong motivating factors for many of the women. Indicated in the above quotations too was a sense that the experience of ageing could be so much better outside the institutions of care into which many of their own mothers had been placed and, indeed, relative to other later-life housing and care arrangements, such as extra-care retirement communities. Crucially, however, this was not about forestalling formal care altogether, or ignoring that it may become necessary as they aged, but about making early, independent decisions regarding the kinds of care they would like in their lives, which invariably for all interviewees meant limiting the burden as much as possible (or for as long as possible) on traditional kin.

One commonly discussed proposition, yet to materialise but under serious consideration, is for some of the women to pool their resources in order to share the costs of a live-in carer when a few of them may be in a position to require this level of support. This desire to keep care in the community reflects their wider negative feelings towards retirement communities, which we explored in a focus group dedicated to attitudes to age and ageing. Here, retirement communities were very strongly condemned as spaces that are insufficiently tolerant of diversity, sexual diversity in particular, and for cultivating a shallow sense of community. The will to age differently, to overturn ageist stereotypes of later life, and to develop deeper bonds of friendship and empathy than are deemed to be possible in these other types of retirement community were strongly expressed by the women. Also, in contradistinction to what is perceived to be a tendency to group-think and homogeneity in institutional retirement communities, the women felt that New Ground was a space in which one could retain a sense of self and individual identity, as Trudy explains:

At the same time, the women commented that friends and family who were still living independently in individual dwellings were negative about co-housing precisely because they felt it would entail such a loss of identity and autonomy – something they quickly became more positive about, we were told, once they saw New Ground completed and running. Trudy commented that she had had to work hard to persuade her children that she had not capitulated to old age and to help them get over what she described as their ‘oh-mum-you're-not-ready-for-that-yet attitude’. However, the women saw their move to New Ground as taking control of their own destiny rather than, as they felt of others, denying their ageing and hoping for the best. As Joanne put it:

Joanne's words reflect two important themes that emerged in the research. One, as mentioned earlier, was the idea that embracing their housing future in a collective and agentic way was not about ‘ageing successfully’ in the sense that only independence signals success (Katz and Calasanti, Reference Katz and Calasanti2015), but about ‘actually accepting’ their ageing selves as that process unfolds. This open way of thinking and planning in relation to their later life was, for them, a key point of contrast to their parents’ attitudes and practices. Crucially, it includes group discussions that then filter into personal family and friends’ discussions, about the limits and possibilities of informal and formal care (see the ‘Mutual aid, care and love’ section above). These conversations, they felt, are generally unavailable or taboo to people living outside such an intentional senior community.

The other recurring theme relates to how younger members were drawing inspiration from the older, pioneering members of the group. For younger group members, they offer up a different sort of role model and pathway through older age:

Maureen's and Clara's excerpts above also point towards two age-specific concepts in operation at OWCH: first, that as the socio-demographic information detailed before demonstrates, they are a diverse and – some would say – multi-generational group rather than ‘old’ in strict chronological terms. This theoretically enables a range of mutual aid care practices that a narrower, older age group may not. Second, it highlights an attitude that seeks to revert popular stereotypes of the older old as weak, frail or suffering from ill-health. Their role models suggested that agentic ageing well into later life is possible and that providing care to community is one way of enabling that. This is interesting in the context of senior co-housing because, on the one hand, this form of living acknowledges that older age begets more care and, therefore, requires a set-up that can informally facilitate it; on the other hand, it is a model predicated on the belief that shared living improves wellbeing and therefore staves off, for some time at least, the need for too much (or formal) care. It is this lived juxtaposition of acceptance and resistance to normative visions of ageing that the women feel they are working through.