We have two public facing websites (villages.com.au and agedcare101.com.au) and each week they receive several desperate requests for help to locate accommodation by people in their 70s, 80s and 90s. And then there are the phone calls.
These days we have no advice to give them. Everywhere is full.
This week, a gentleman in Adelaide explained he is an aged pensioner and his partner is on jobseeker – giving them $730 per week combined income. The owner of their rented home wants to move back in and has given notice to June to exit.
He tells us the normal agencies have closed off their books because of the long waiting lists.
From the chart above you can see that the median rent in Adelaide is $460 per week. This couple’s $730 income provide very little cash for them to even buy adequate food. And rent prices are increasing by 9.5% to 19.6% annually.
What can we say to these people? Our advice to our staff is to be honest: we don’t have an answer. This is better than sending the enquirer on a goose chase that we know will not deliver a result. What instruction have you given your front-line staff?
Solutions? At The SOURCE we look to prefabricated granny flats. In NSW they can have a footprint up to 65sqm.
As one of our colleagues stated, most public schools have demountable class rooms and that is "accepted".
Plausibly every horizontal retirement village would have the space to install say 10, which across 2,000 villages will deliver 20,000 homes or 20% of the government’s social and affordable housing target.
Say the cost of a two-bedroom granny flat is $150,000, at $400 per week ($20,800pa) rent, this will deliver a 14% return.
The investment would pay itself off in say 10 years and then delivers the 14%+ return for another 20 years, with rent increases.
Will councils allow this project of 10 new prefab granny flats in a village? I expect they are receiving the same calls as us by desperate people, so hopefully yes.
Will the other residents object? The experience of Uniting here in NSW is no, they do not object.
Perhaps this is the only way for our staff to have advice for desperate people searching.
