About 25 years ago I saw a beautiful complex in Holland. It provided exactly what you are offering today in Malta. The thing that I was sceptical about was that it was going to accommodate only elderly people (age isolation?).
Many years before the Holland project, we had already solved that problem in Malta when in some localities some streets were built with an integrated combination of small ground floor units and larger accommodation above them. What was not available to the elderly people who lived in the small g.f. units in Malta was the social, luxury, and other requirements service. That was provided by the younger next door neighbours. Many elderly people need the ‘live’ sound of younger ones laughing and fighting – even though they complain about it. One of my ‘dream’ proposals was to build what your company and The Netherlands built ( but with modifications - for example above or close to a school) and with an integration of compact units and larger ones; for the elderly and the younger ones to live, of their own free choice, close to each other. The younger ones to absorb the experience that time offered to the older; and the older ones to remain fully alive (not just existing) within a younger generation. There was at least one private biography once written - the suggested title was “ One Hundred years young”.
Some years after the complex in Holland was inaugurated, it failed. Initially elderly people were queuing to obtain accommodation there, but eventually they got bored of it because, although it was luxurious, they felt that they were ‘existing’ (not living) in an age-isolation world. For many elderly people the dignity of feeling still useful and integrated is far greater than any other luxury. Ironically enough it even costs less to provide.
Matured people have learned, over the expense of time, that it is not money that gives them richness. These people
know that smaller bills are more affordable to them; but most of all they prefer their dignity to be respected. Many people may find this difficult to understand today. Time will teach them ; but by then, time may be against them. Being a dreamer costs nothing; as long as one is prepared to accept also reality.
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