HOW HOLLAND CATERS FOR THE AGED IN SUITABLE REST HOMES

Wanganui Chronicle, 5 November 1949, Page 6

HOW HOLLAND CATERS FOR THE AGED IN SUITABLE REST HOMES

“Nobody wants you when you are old,” I heard somebody say sadly the other day. The young people can’t even believe we were ever young ourselves, or that they themselves will some day be old. There is nothing worse for human beings than to feel themselves in the way. That is why some countries have provided housing for elderly people. A recent visitor to Wanganui, who before the war had travelled extensively, and had resided in Holland for some lime, told several friends what had been done in that country to establish rest homes for the old. In fact, they have hud such homes for over a century, she said. She had known Englishwomen who had taken advantage of these homes, as they had been unable to find anything of the sort in their own country. “In the big towns in Holland you will find several such rest-houses, which are like hotels or boardinghouses run in the interests of the old folks,” she said. “Some of these resthouses range from expensive places down to the simple guest houses, in which each old person pays a sum for room and board.”

The visitor said that when she lived in Holland the amount was round about £3O a year, out it was probably more now under present conditions. The more expensive had suites of rooms, each consisting of bedroom and sitting-room. Unattached men and women had their two principal meals of the day in a restaurant in the building, and most of the married couples had their meals in their own sitting-rooms. Some of the rest-houses had accommodation only for unmarried men and women, who took their meals in the restaurant and used’the public rooms for recreation, writing or just sitting talking. In such places old people were spared the bother of housekeeping and domestic difficulties, and they had the society of others of their age and way of thougnt. They were never made to feel in the way. From the young people’s point of view there was much to commend itself in these rest-houses. It meant practically no mother-in-law problem and rarely did one find an old couple occupying a room cr two of a house which formerly accommodated a whole family, thus solving the housing problem. Young people say they want to live their own lives, but seldom realise that old people, too, want to live their own lives and be able to do things without others complaining and have the sort of food they have always been used to without being told they are not getting enough vitamins. “I’ve known people terribly afraid of growing old,” said the visitor, who went on to say that she had not found that fear of old age among her Dutch friends. They always say that when they are old they shall go and live in a rest-house.

For the weekly wage-earner in old age there were collections of little houses built, special!/ for old people. Usually built round three sides of a square, they had little garden plots in the middle. Each house had a big living room, a bedroom and tiny kitchen, and were built, just off a main street, within easy reach of the shops yet. away from all nvise and bustle. Keenly interested in housing projects for the aged, the visitor showed to her friends a photograph of a group of tiny houses set in a park in New Jeresy, a place she had visited when in America. Called the old-age colony, it. was hailed as a forward step in providing comfortable. cheery quarters for those who had passed beyond the useful age. The colony was begun on a modest scale with about a dozen cottages consisting of two rooms, a kitchen and bathroom and each with a tiny porch. It. was intended to expand the colony to 50 houses. In the centre of the square stands a community house and-assem-bly rooms where socials, Sunday services, etc., can be held. Each cottage has a third of an acre of ground.

The visitor said she was keen to see what is being done in New Zealand, and had been told that, cottages had been provided for 010-age pensioners and other people on small incomes in a South Island city, and that city councils in some of the larger cities in New Zealand propose building blocks of small flats.