Abstract
The number of elderly people is increasing rapidly but the rental housing supply for them is still very small in the housing market. The government program “Superior Quality Rental Housing for Elderly People (SQRHEP)” started in 1998. SQRHEP housing are supplied by the private sector or land owners but governed as public housing for the first 10-20 years. The residents are elderly people moved from other places and need to make a new community. Common spaces in collective housing are useful for promoting formation of communities, and in this housing project, construction cost of the common space is subsidized for by the government. To clarify the actual condition of common space and its use in SQRHEP housing, the author inspected 19 SQRHEP housing and had an interview with the owners, superintendents and Life Support Advisers. This paper discovered that (i) There are many good ideas for utilizing the common spaces to create communities in SQRHEP housing. For example, community rooms, common corridors, chat corners, common vegetable gardens and so on.(ii) Almost all SQRHEP housing have community rooms and some of them employ LSAs. LSAs are helpful in promoting active usage of the community rooms by the residents.
