“A home to grow old in”: The challenge of non-metropolitan housing to support healthy ageing-in-place

Access to suitable and affordable housing for older residents is critical to healthy ageing-in-place. Unfortunately, many non-metropolitan communities do not have the housing stock needed to support residents as they age. This is because industrial restructuring and resource frontier ageing processes have led to limited reinvestment in, and expansion of, ageing housing assets that were designed for a young workforce. Such deficiencies can have cascading impacts not only on the quality-of-life for seniors, but also on community capacity to address overall housing needs. This paper includes a three-part review. After a review of the international literature, the first part introduces data tracking demographic and housing change in 38 non-metropolitan communities across British Columbia (BC), Canada. The second reviews the literature and data on demographic change in Canada, BC, and two case communities – Houston and Tumbler Ridge. The third describes the rural housing landscape across the non-metropolitan BC sample and draws on the voices of older residents in the case communities to describe the lack of fit between the housing stock and the housing needs as people age.