Long may we live!
Possibilities for Housing the Elderly (1948) H.G. van Beusekom
Post-war public housing policy
Hendrik Gerrit van Beusekom was a specialist in public housing and wrote extensively on housing for the elderly, including this article in the Tijdschrift voor Maatschappelijk Werk (Journal for Social Work) in 1948 in which he described the current challenges and possibilities in housing pensioners. He describes the benefits of building new retirement homes, which included freeing up housing stock for younger generations. One of the disadvantages, however, was the limit on the volume of these buildings, resulting in the tendency to design homes with communal dormitories rather than separate bedrooms. This limitation stemmed from the post-war public housing policy, which prescribed maximum dimensions for living spaces. Opportunities to build high-quality retirement homes in the public sector were thus extremely limited.