Hammond, M., Kavanagh, N., Buffel, T., Lewis, A., McGarry, P., Phillipson, C., White, S., Yarker, S., 2026.
Co-Creating Age-Friendly Social Housing: Improving experiences of ageing in place through community collaboration
| Output Type: | Report |
| Brief Description/Editor(s): | Commissioned by One Manchester Limited; Southway Housing Trust; Stockport Homes; Community Savers |
| Publisher: | Manchester Metropolitan University in collaboration with University of Manchester and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority |
| URL: | www.msa.ac.uk/research/co-creating-age-friendly-social-housing |
| Pagination: | 68 |
The World Health Organization's (WHO) Age-friendly Cities and Communities model calls for
older people to be 'actively involved, valued and supported' in creating fulfilling places to live,
supported by cross-sectoral collaboration to address the multi-faceted challenges that older
people experience. Research has highlighted the challenges of enacting this on the ground,
particularly in minoritised and marginalised communities, given the barriers to civic participation
resulting from multiple levels of economic and social exclusion.
Housing associations are an important stakeholder in the Age-Friendly Cities and Communities
movement in the UK. Over half of the socially rented properties in England and Wales have an
older person (50+) living in them, many of whom experience significant challenges because of
economic, social and health inequalities. This has led many housing associations to rethink how
they can support their older tenants, beyond the immediate home environment. The National
Housing Federation argues that housing associations have "...a key role in shifting the policy
agenda from dependence to prevention, from paternalism to choice and independence"
(National Housing Federation, 2016).
This project aims to explore how older people, housing associations, academics, and other
stakeholders, can come together to develop novel, place-based age-friendly initiatives.
The study aimed to address the following questions:
How can age-friendly programmes respond to the lived experiences of older tenants?
What are the processes through which residents and housing associations can co-create
age-friendly programmes, recognising the different powers and constraints on each party?
How can co-produced age-friendly initiatives address different experiences of spatial
exclusion, as a result of gentrification, social isolation and discrimination?