Let’s spend our lives together

Hephzibah Anderson finds out about co-housing – where young and old alike live under the same roof

By the time Luli Harvey reached her 70s, her entire adult life had been spent in London. It was where she’d worked hard, married – and divorced –twice, and raised her three children, happily forging a rich, busy existence. Even so, the countryside called to her.

It’s a fantasy familiar to many of course, nourished by Escape to the Country and an endless list of books stretching back to H E Bates’s 50s fiction The Darling Buds of May and beyond. The difference was that Harvey made the dream a reality –and not just as a septuagenarian, but single-handedly and during Covid lockdowns.

Its pursuit forced her to focus on a question that too many of her peers ignore until it’s too late, she says: how to facilitate convivial, dignified living in older age.

The solution she hit upon is one that ought to have policy-makers as well as individuals sit up and listen.

Soon to turn 77, Harvey is a spry figure. Her flair for brightly patterned knitwear jives with the flowers and paintings in the new home she’s made in a one-bedroom, ground-floor flat. There’s also an airy conservatory with views of what she simply but feelingly calls ‘this’ –trees, a wintry sky and small birds flocking round a feeder.

Harvey still works part-time as a counsellor and weighs her words carefully, yet she doesn’t hesitate to admit that her move to the country required some bravery. Indeed, she might never have found the courage, she believes, were it not for the sudden availability of a hard-tocome-by property in a co-housing community in the rural south-east.

Community is the thread that runs throughout Harvey’s description of how she ultimately made the leap – a tale of pluck and luck, in which yearning and realism play equal parts. Community, she knew, would be vital in helping her settle in a new home – vital, too, in ensuring that her new life in the country would be sustainable as she aged and her needs evolved.

More than a decade earlier, her Brixton neighbours had relocated to the same rural co-housing estate.

Harvey kept in touch and became a frequent visitor at monthly volunteer days, when residents would meet to tackle the upkeep of the grounds. Having made her living as a community education worker, she found a set-up that felt like home the moment she set foot there.

But could she really leave behind the roomy Victorian house where her children had grown up and the neighbourhood she’d helped flourish as a volunteer engaged in local politics as well as conservation?

There wasn’t time to dwell on it. She was told that if she wanted the flat, she had to bid that day. And so she did, eventually allowing herself to be driven up to the asking price.

Then came the reality of downsizing. She had four storeys to tackle, including five bedrooms, an attic and a basement – all chockful of belongings amassed over decades by her family of hoarders. With the charity shops and recycling centres closed, Harvey took to leaving things out on the street when the weather was dry and using websites like Freecycle – again, drawing on the community around her.

There were nevertheless moments when she hoped it would all fall through. ‘It was just so frightening,’ she recalls. Instead, the barriers tumbled one by one, and finally, on a summer’s day in 2020, mask-wearing removal men pitched up to load the fraction of her worldly goods that remained into a van. Arriving in the countryside, the welcome she received included a steady supply of homegrown produce left on her doorstep.

Harvey is a passionate advocate for harnessing personal agency. It’s her view that, in general, people don’t think seriously and soon enough about their later-life plans.

It’s vital, Harvey insists, to reach decisions while you still have the physical and financial capacity. ‘You have to adapt – adapt now’, she now urges those as young as 50.

Harvey knew she didn’t want a purpose-built retirement village. Not only would it feel like a ghetto, but because most folk relocate to them only in their later years, ‘It means you’re a bunch of old crocs trying to help each other but you’re buying in the main support. No, no – I don’t want that.’

For those, like Harvey, looking to relocate to a community in which they’ll have chance to age in place supported by friends and neighbours, co-housing is proving an increasingly appealing alternative.

The first thing to note is that, while co-housing living arrangements do entail an element of communality, they are not communes. Despite – or perhaps because of – living through the Sixties, those don’t appeal to Harvey.

Instead, co-housing seeks to strike a balance between autonomy and collective decision-making, privacy and shared experience. Like other practical innovations including adjustable wrenches and flatpack furniture, co-housing turns out to be a Scandinavian import, originating in Denmark in the 1960s.

Then, as now, it provided residents with their own living quarters (complete with kitchens) along with shared spaces that might include a dining area or laundry facilities, gardens or a car-share scheme. Independent incomes and private lives coexist with the expectation that residents will pull together to collectively manage those communal spaces and facilities, and there are opportunities to gather for meals, meetings and activities.

The freehold of a co-housing site will usually be held by a non-profit company, whose shareholders are the residents themselves. A service charge covers the upkeep of common areas and management decisions are reached in a non-hierarchical way, with all residents given an equal say.

Many co-housing developments are intergenerational but some are dedicated to senior residents. In the Netherlands, where co-housing is incorporated into national housing policies, there are hundreds that cater solely for oldies. In the UK, where co-housing’s roots stretch back only to the 1990s, New Ground, a community dedicated specifically to women over 50, opened in London’s High Barnet in 2017.

While it’s not free of day-to-day challenges – neighbours can desire differing levels of privacy. And just because consensus decision-making is favoured, that doesn’t mean things don’t get heated, claims for the benefits of co-housing are high.

Studies have shown that by fostering mutual aid, connectedness and social participation, it can do plenty to enhance physical and mental health, as well as general quality of life.

One surprise for Harvey has been just how long the list of communal chores is – a sizeable rural acreage means there’s always something that needs doing.

Yet there’s no note of weariness in her voice – in fact, she seems positively radiant with purpose.

‘What you put in, you get out threefold. I think there is a longing in all of us to be useful but if you’re stuck in a box, you just feel like a burden,’ she says.

Above all, collaborative living arrangements provide a ready-made community of supportive, likeminded neighbours, something that’s especially valuable in later life. They can even stave off the need for more formalised care.

‘It’s really not good for an older person to be left stranded,’ Harvey notes, pointing to mounting evidence of a link between loneliness and dementia.

In Harvey’s community, as in most other co-housing set-ups, there is a weekly potluck supper for anyone who fancies eating with their neighbours. Someone will always be around to help out with babysitting or to offer a lift.

Most residents also join a task force group devoted to a particular aspect of the estate’s running. And there’s a monthly meeting to reach decisions about expenditure.

Harvey is the joint eldest member of her community. While her neighbours pursue a wide range of careers, families with children make up the vast majority of the association’s households. Far from making her feel like a burden-inwaiting, however, she says they welcome the presence of elders.

Despite their proven social advantages, it remains tough for such endeavours to come to fruition.

There are things that the government could do to make planning applications quicker and easier, Harvey notes. ‘It’s in their interests. People will support each other taking the pressure off the NHS and social services, but it’s a real uphill struggle.

Attention, kindness, care – the need for these qualities is great.

How much better for everyone if they can flow from friendships and community.

For further information, go to www.cohousing.org.uk