Housing initiatives for elderly people. Local and community-based alternatives to the challenge of deinstitutionalisation of care (ALTERCARE)

This project proposes to explore housing initiatives for the elderly (existing or in development) that present alternatives to the current model of care organisation at home or in assisted living facilities. We start from the hypothesis that developing initiatives focused on creating publicly-oriented senior housing, as an alternative to one's own home and to residential care, will enable the de-familiarisation of care and help circumvent the territorial, social class, gender, and origin-based inequities inherent in the current model of social organisation.

Specifically, we aim to locate, map, and analyse local and community-oriented initiatives that innovate regarding residential options for the elderly, in order to overcome the difficulties and the dilemma of choosing between aging at home or in an institutionalised setting, particularly when loss of autonomy arises during the aging process.

Our intention is for these initiatives to shed their alternative character and to contribute to facilitating deinstitutionalisation policies and to subverting the class, gender, and origin-based injustices upon which access to and provision of care for the elderly is based. It is precisely to address these inequities that the project adopts an intersectional perspective. We are also interested in approaching these initiatives from a territorial perspective, given the higher rate of aging in rural areas and their limitations in accessing socio-healthcare resources, which are underdeveloped in these territories.

The methodological design we propose for this research is ethnographic, collaborative, and based on case studies. The ethnography will be multi-sited and comparative, allowing for the articulation of both a general overview and a detailed picture of the situation regarding this type of housing. We will collect the experiences and narratives of both users and promoters, workers, and other agents involved in the various initiatives. The collection of data from digital sources to enable the mapping of local and community-based housing initiatives is also planned. We will also gather data related to public policies on housing, health, and social services in the context of population aging.

The results will aim to overcome the fragmented view of social policy by providing knowledge about public policies regarding housing, social services, and healthcare, taking into account the level of social and healthcare coordination, the jurisdictional framework, and the relationship with the paradigm of deinstitutionalisation of long-term care.