Satisfaction with Retirement Housing: Attitudes, Recommendations and Moves

Abstract

This paper reports on the satisfaction of 600 persons who had chosen to live in special group housing for the well-elderly. Six widely varying types of housing facilities comprised the choices: retirement hotel, urban high-rise, life-care home and retirement villages appealing to three different socioeconomic groups. Responses were compared to those given by matched controls who lived in conventional housing. Satisfaction was measured in three ways: a direct global question; a series of projective questions; and the behavioral measure of moves away from the site: both those that had already taken place and those that were being contemplated. All satisfaction criteria were combined into a summed satisfaction score as well as analyzed separately. The elements related to satisfaction with retirement housing were concluded to be: proximity, security, balance of independence-dependence, proper amount of age-segregation, degree of financial commitment, psychological readiness, provision of creature comforts, reference group and relative satisfaction, and alienation or integration.