"We have sat on our hands for years" as our elderly face growing homes crisis

Increasing older population in Edinburgh amongst most vulnerable victims of lack of housing

pic Pavel Danyluk of Pexels

Here’s a little Covid 19 morality question to ponder; which of the following do you agree with more. The first of these two statements was a handwritten note by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the second was made by Pope Francis. There’s probably a clue to the expected answer in the sources…

 “Why are we destroying everything for people who will die soon anyway” or “ignoring and abandoning the elderly is a brutal thing, it is a sin.”

The second one? We thought so. After all, that would surely be the reaction of any reasonable, empathetic human being with a conscience.

And yet, here in Edinburgh, we are in danger of stumbling blindly into a situation where many of our older citizens will be consigned to poverty – with a combination of factors now conspiring to make a bad situation worse.

Analysis by the Pensions Policy Institute forecasts a significant rise in older people renting or paying off mortgages, with home ownership predicted to decrease from 78% to 63% by 2041.

That will have big implications, as paying housing costs limits the ability of people to save for retirement, delays retirement, and reduces disposable income post-retirement.

In Scotland, 22% of older people rent in the private rented and social sector. Around half of the 150,000 older people in Scotland who live in poverty are renters. By the way, that figure of 150,000 is equivalent to the population of the city of Dundee. That’s a lot of struggling people.