ABSTRACT
As the UK’s first senior co-housing community, New Ground is home to Older Women’s Cohousing (OWCH). OWCH is responsible for everything. Not only does the group handle the management and upkeep of the complex, it was instrumental in both its inception and its construction. After planning permission was granted and every OWCH member had been assigned a flat, Pollard Thomas Edwards also hosted ‘design surgeries’ where residents could rework the internal layouts of their homes to suit their specific lifestyles and preferences. OWCH members are expected to participate in the running of the building, but this is organised on a volunteer basis. New Ground challenges the assumptions that shared living is for young people and that senior housing is only for the needy. In the UK, over three million people over the age of 70 live alone, and two-thirds of these are women, thanks to longer life expectancies and imbalances in the age profiles of married couples.
