Co-housing in the Netherlands ‘living with friends as neighbors and neighbors as friends’ By Kat, M. (Mark Kat) Bachelor thesis Geography, Planning and Environment (GPE) Nijmegen School of Management Radboud University Nijmegen June, 2019 ii Colophon Mark Kat [email protected] s4810791 Prof. dr. P.M. Ache Words: 19.971 Bachelor thesis Geography, Planning and Environment (GPE) Nijmegen School of Management Radboud University Nijmegen June, 2019 iii Preface For the most time in my life I have lived in co-housing projects and nowadays I live in a house with other students in Nijmegen. That is why I was became enthusiastic when prof. dr. P.M. Ache asked if I would write a bachelor thesis on co-housing. Due this research I have gained a lot of attention for co-housing in relationship with ageing, as I have never really thought about this relationship before. I always experienced it as a sociable environment to live in but I never really consciously thought about other advantages. I realized that living in a co-housing for seniors could be a great place to age with a lot of neighbors who are willing to help each other and together also tackle the phenomenon of loneliness among the elderly. The writing of the bachelor thesis has been a very enriching experience for my educational level. The struggle I sometimes had during both writing and collecting data has been absolutely instructive to me when I look at it afterwards. I want to thank prof. dr. Ache for his helpful tips for the writing of my thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank Daan Schipper for all the time he spent with me in the university library and my parents who always helped with clearing my head. iv Summary In this research the concept of co-housing, in relation to the process of ageing, in the Netherlands will be studied. This relevance of this research lies within the ageing societies that western societies are dealing with. Directly after the Second World War a relatively many children were born, labeled as the baby-boom generation. This generation is now at the moment of reaching a certain age at which they are labeled as seniors, being the age of retirement which is around 65. While in 2019 the Netherlands counts 1,3 million inhabitants who are over 75 years old. It is expected that this number will increase till 2,1 million in 2030 (Rijksoverheid, 2019). To the greatest extent this is a qualitative research about the motives that people have to start living in a co-housing project and about the structures that determine how the process of ageing goes. To complete these two elements this research also contains a quantitative part that provides an overview of how co-housing is carried out in the Netherlands. On one hand how co-housing is distributed over the Netherlands and on the other how much of Dutch co-housing lays a focus on the aspect of ageing. The main research question and the research aim are as follows: Main research question - How is the idea of co-housing, especially in relation to ageing, carried out in the Netherlands, and how do the visible structures in co-housing projects have influence on the process of ageing? Research aim - The aim of this research is to give an image on co-housing in the Netherlands in relation to the process of an ageing society. On one hand by providing an overview of co-housing in the Netherlands, for example where, how many and in which forms co-housing projects exists. And on other hand, by closely looking into co-housing projects and providing a deeper look in how the structures in co-housing projects work. The quantitative part of this research has been done with the data of 813 co-housing projects in the Netherlands retrieved from the website of the Cooperative Housing Association. This association provides data on the address, year of foundation, ownership-structure, housing units, age composition and if a certain ideology is being practiced within the community. With the use of the data of the address of all co-housing projects in the Netherlands maps have been made that make the distribution of co-housing in the Netherlands visible. From this maps can be observed that co- housing takes places mainly in medium till big sized cities in the Netherlands, especially in the west of the Netherlands. The location quotient that has been calculated for co-housing in general, intergenerational co-housing and 50+ co-housing shows that the Randstad is a region where relatively, but also absolutely, lots of co-housing projects take place. Utrecht is the province that has the highest location quotient for all three aspects, but Zuid-Holland and Noord-Holland have quite high location quotients. Two provinces which are not part of the Randstad but also have high location quotients are Gelderland and Groningen. Furthermore there are also quite a lot of provinces that have low location quotients for co-housing in general, intergenerational co-housing and 50+ co- housing. The three provinces that have the lowest location quotients are Drenthe, Limburg and Zeeland. Co-housing is not that well distributed in the Netherlands. The other part of the quantitative v part is a descriptive statistical analysis of co-housing in the Netherlands. This part shows that co- housing in the Netherlands to the greatest extend is focused on 50+ residents. Furthermore it shows that there are many differences between co-housing projects in the Netherlands in their size, age composition and ownership-structure. The qualitative part of this research focusses on the motivations and the structures of co-housing projects in the Netherlands. For this part interviews have been done with residents of co-housing projects in the Netherlands which are also on the website of the Cooperative Housing association. With the use of a semi-structured interview guide, so that the respondents could also cite motivations and structures themselves, there has been found that there are multiple motivations for living in a co-housing project, and that both visible and invisible structures are important for the process of ageing in a co-housing project. Important motivations for living in a co-housing project are the possibility to share life with others, supporting and helping each other and the reduction of costs that living with others entails. When looking at the important structures a distinction between visible and invisible structures have been found. The visible structures consist out of the ownership- structure, housing units and age composition. Ownership-structure differs in rent or the buying of a co-housing unit. The amount of housing units can vary from very small sized co-housing projects consisting out of two housing units till very big sized co-housing projects consisting out of 192 housing units. And the age composition can be either intergenerational, in which the residents are from different age categories, or 50+, in which all of the residents are seniors. Furthermore the structures which are not directly visible also have influence on the process of ageing in a co-housing project. These not visible structures mainly are about the character features of the residents who live in the co-housing projects. The human nature is an important element of co-housing as respect, tolerance and the ability to endure are mentioned as important character features to ease the process of ageing. The answers to the main research question and the aim of the research have been found. An answer to the main question would be: The idea of co-housing is still developing in the Netherlands. Even though the foundation rate of new projects has started to descend as the baby-boom generation reached a certain age, there are still new initiatives for co-housing projects. The Dutch government wants to stimulate these initiatives for this form of housing, which will be good for co-housing in the Netherlands. Right now, there are already many projects in all parts of the Netherlands, and lots of these projects are focused on the aspect of ageing. The structures within co-housing projects do have an impact on the process of ageing, but they depend on various wishes of residents if perceived as advantage or disadvantage. With these findings it can be said that the research aim of this research has been achieved as an image on both the overview of co-housing and a close look into co-housing in the Netherlands has been given. vi Table of contents Pre face iv Summary v 1. Introduction 9 1.1 Problem statement 9 1.2 Research aim and questions 10 1.3 Relevance 12 1.3.1 Social relevance 12 1.3.2 Scientific relevance 12 2 Methodology 13 2.1 Research strategy 13 2.1.1 Ontology and epistemology 14 2.1.2 Validity 14 2.1.3 Conceptual framework 14 2.2 Research material 15 3 Theory 18 3.1 The link between ageing and co-housing 18 3.2 Ageing society 18 3.2.1 Age 19 3.3 Problems that an ageing society brings to housing 19 3.4 Co-housing 20 3.5 Co-housing as a suitable housing option for seniors 21 3.6 Co-housing structures 21 3.7 Ownership 22 3.8 Intergenerational co-housing 23 3.9 Dutch co-housing intentions 23 4 Co-housing mapped 24 4.1 Co-housing projects in the Netherlands 25 4.2 Intergenerational co-housing projects in the Netherlands 29 4.3 50+ co-housing projects in the Netherlands 32 5 Descriptive statistical analysis 35 5.1 Co-housing forms 35 5.2 Housing units 36 5.2.1 Housing units of intergenerational co-housing projects 39 5.2.2 Housing units of 50+ co-housing projects 40 5.3 Year of foundation 40 5.3.1 Year of foundation of intergenerational co-housing projects 42 5.3.2 Year of foundation