“We must launch a vast policy of adaptation of housing to aging”

Lhe crisis of mistrust – largely unfair and undeserved (but that’s another debate) – which is hitting nursing homes has convinced politicians to make home care a priority solution. But if the French want to age at home, they still have to be given the means. And that’s the rub. Because the incantations do not make a public policy.

On this subject, two statistics hover like a shadow that take the form of a collective denial: each year, nearly 10,000 people over 65 die from falls at home. At the same time, the Little Brothers of the Poor estimated the number of elderly people at nearly 530,000 who, by dint of isolation, are “in a situation of social death”. On this subject, the deputy Jérôme Guedj issued, in a report submitted to the government in 2020, proposals that it would not be useless to implement.

Because it’s no longer enough to jump like a kid screaming “home, home!” »it is now a question of thinking about a global strategy which begins with a proactive policy of adaptation of housing.

Adaptation of housing

While 74% of seniors own their home, it is up to them to adapt it to their emerging weaknesses. As it is up to social landlords to take up the challenge of adapting an HLM stock in which 24% of tenants are already over 65 years old, but where barely 37% of housing is accessible by lift. However, the aid system for adapting housing to aging in France is incredibly complex and shamefully pusillanimous. Complex, because it is characterized by multiple funders (ANAH, CNAV, departments, etc.), all of which apply different eligibility conditions. Insufficient since France mobilizes 152 million each year euros to adapting housing to aging when Great Britain devotes nearly 580 million euros to it a year.

These observations led me to propose, in an interministerial report submitted to the government in May 2021, the creation of a system that I called MaPrimeAdapt’ and that I wanted to be incentive, unique and universal.

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Incentive, because, when we know that the beneficiaries of such an adaptation are on average 84 years old, we measure the need to better anticipate. Unique, because it is essential that retirees benefit from a visible and readable system in the form of a counter managed by the ANAH, easily accessible on the Internet or in a nearby location. Universal finally, because if the assumption of responsibility for the work must obviously be subject to a condition of resources, all retirees must be able to benefit from logistical support (assessment visit by an occupational therapist, orientation towards a competent craftsman, etc.) from 70 years, regardless of their resources or level of dependence.

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