It’s curry night and service is in full swing. Baileys and bitter flow from the bar, kormas are ladled at tables, and laughter, complaints, and spills erupt through dentures. As I give a Nan a naan, a yell cuts through the noise; an older lady has fallen by the serving hatch and is unable to stand unassisted. “Would you give me a hand, sweetheart?”, she calmly asks, “Don’t touch her!” the bar manager snaps as I bend towards her. “You’re not allowed to touch her!” The woman blinks up at me, confused. “We have to call the care team — otherwise she could sue.” And so, for the next 45 minutes, she lies there, motionless but conscious and otherwise unhurt. “I won’t sue,” she promises, as staff avert their gaze, stepping over her to deliver Guinnesses, Pernods and chicken tikka masalas. Occasionally, she rolls onto one side. Eventually, she is hoisted to her feet, the official hoister having arrived on the scene.
Today, over 90,000 older people live in over 1,700 similar developments, where scenes like this play out all the time. They’re advertised in glossy magazines subtly named Silver and Dignity, and their brochures often include salt-and-pepper bearded Adonises playing croquet, or else happy couples watching the sunset with a glass of wine. On-site dining is often offered — restaurants serving the British classics: sausage and mash, fish and chips, the ubiquitous curries — alongside shops, gyms, swimming pools and libraries. Every group is catered for. And, judging by the marketing, these villages look like the kind of place you might tell your children grandma went to play with the other grandmas, or even the perfect setting for a best-selling multimedia cosy crime series.
But the reality, as that lady’s fall in the cafeteria implies, is often very different. Residents face service charges averaging £524 a month, on top of ground rents that can exceed £500 a year. And if some fees are certain, others can bewilder both residents and their kids. While private organisations and charities often own these villages, after all, one provider sold 25% of its properties to the local council for use as social housing. The remaining 75% are privately purchased by residents. With no standardised model, understanding exactly what you’re signing up for can be hard. In some cases, responsibility for selling the property falls to the next of kin — with homes left on the market for months, often years. Research shows that around half are eventually sold at a loss, during which time families can still be liable for council tax, service charges and ground rent.
I got to know this grim reality firsthand. I used to work in one as a jobbing receptionist, translator, delivery-boy, diplomat, and often faux-grandson to the residents of the apartment complex of over 300 flats in the south-east of England. And now, I’m back, for the first time since leaving university. It’s the end of lunch and the café is quiet. Three ladies are in bejewelled finery as if on the Titanic; they sit and sigh and wait. They are, of course, all waiting for the inevitable as I realise when I enthusiastically approach someone I recognise. “How’s Harry?” I ask. “Dead.” “Helen?” “Dead.” “Lucy?” “In care.” “Pirate Paul?” (he wore an eye-patch and a cap with an anchor on it.) “Dead, I found him.” “Mary One?” “Alive.” “Mary Two?” “Nope.” “Bombay Jan?” “In the bar.” “Little John?” “Had a fall”. Either time is of the essence or there’s something in the custard.
The village tessellates out from a central plaza. The foyer is bright white, its hunched ceiling propped up by columns along the main thoroughfare. There are no windows, only a rectangular skylight along the roof — which, despite easing any ascension, gives me a feeling of already being six feet under. Vast new-build tiers stretch outward, lined with numbered doors and passageways that weave into the distance. I’m told the architects modelled the building on a cruise ship, though the interior feels closer to the Isle of Wight ferry. Along the main walkway, as promised in the brochure, there’s a little shop, gym, hairdresser, and woodwork room. To the right, an expansive bar and restaurant, where white tablecloths are decorated with neatly laid tables — though there was more life on the Mary Celeste.
I find the manager of another site — part of a national chain — in a side room typically reserved for “events” (wakes). He’s the same height as many residents, has a mop of brown hair, and wears a translucent white shirt. He’s quick to burst the bubble that, despite older people’s endearing appearance, retirement villages are a community like any other. “Half the residents here are nobs,” he tells me. “You can get any walk of life here. Some are looking for sheltered housing, others are escaping from domestic abuse, things like that.” There isn’t much of that here, he hastens to add, but in facilities with 300 apartments, there’s always a chance of copping a “wrong’un” as a neighbour.
Not that these risks put a dent in demand. As the manager says, there’s a 12-18 month waiting list for rentals, while sales can take up to a year. “But if you’re a cash buyer,” he adds, with a wry smile, “it puts you up to the top of the list.” It’s impossible, here, not to return to the question of money — for amid the ground rents and tax bills, many of these places are ultimately run as businesses. “Regardless of if you own it or rent it, it always comes back to us,” says the manager of a care home’s business model, explaining that for every year someone lives in the property, 1% of the original purchase price is taken off what the company will eventually buy it back from you (or your estate) for.
If, for example, you buy a flat for £100,000, then live in it for a decade, you’d see a return of just £90,000. That errant 10% is chalked up to maintenance and bills — and excludes a range of other fees — with the money passed back to your next of kin if you die. In practice, though, the economics can be even more brutal than these calculations imply. I meet one resident, a short man, with a flat cap smudged onto his head, who tells me his apartment was worth £170,000 when he entered into a shared ownership agreement with the council. Not only does he lose 1% of its value every year — plus additional fees — but “flats of that size are going for 400 grand now, which is a bit of a kick in the teeth, innit?”
That touches at a deeper issue that gnaws at this community: the buy-back price excludes any allowance for inflation. In other words, then, the man with the cap bought a share of a flat worth £170,000, and it may now be worth £400,000 on the open market — but when he dies, the company will buy back his share from his next of kin for less than he originally paid. No wonder he feels cheated out of the property’s increased value. Certainly, it’s a jarring contrast to how property works “on the outside” — as residents call it. But here, there’s no such thing as capital appreciation.
Defenders of the care home system would claim its benefits are supposedly quantifiable. One retirement village charity commissioned a team from Aston University to investigate the health outcomes for residents. Over their six-year study, the researchers reported a 38% reduction in NHS costs, a 64% drop in depression, a 75% increase in physical activity, with 86.5% of residents reporting they “never or hardly ever” felt lonely. It’s a sentiment echoed by the people I meet. Wally, with his neatly-combed grey hair, wears a chequered shirt and has saved me a seat among his circle. They’re sharing bottles of rosé in the foyer. Wally pours himself a glass, and they all guffaw as he dribbles some onto the faux-marble table. He has lived here for 12 years, and tells me “this is the best thing that could’ve happened to me” — especially given his wife has died and Wally himself faces a range of health issues. “If I’d have stayed in my house,” he adds, “I’d have had a very, very lonely life.”
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