The large-scale housing exchange will save the villages

The large housing exchange aims to save rural villages

If life in rural villages is to be saved, it requires investments, thinks the chairman of the Joint Council of Rural Districts.

Seven rental homes for the elderly in Astrup, which give them a place to move if they sell their detached house, for example, to a family with children. (Photo: © Allan Bo Poulsen)

By Andreas Holm Hansen ( [email protected] ) 42 min. ago

Housing rotation could be the new recipe for how we save life in rural villages.

With housing rotation, it is intended that the elderly move out of their large detached houses to make room for new families with children – and even move into a smaller rental home without losing their network and ties to the local area.

Something that has been done successfully in Astrup in Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality, where seven rental homes have been built for some of the town's elderly, while younger people have moved into the houses.

However, despite the success in the country's largest municipality, attractive rental homes for the elderly are lacking in many other places, and the investment enthusiasm is too small.

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> It's frustrating that there are people who want to move into something, but

> there's not really anyone who wants to build it.

> Steffen Damsgaard, chairman of the Joint Council of Rural Districts

The chairman of the Joint Council of Rural Districts, Steffen Damsgaard, urges the government to establish a state support fund for general housing construction in rural villages with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants.

- It provides a rotation in the village, where the seniors who are there can also stay in the village they may have lived in for many years, he says.

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Want to stay in the towns

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When the square meters and maintenance of the detached house in the village become too much of a challenge, the elderly owner will quite rightly often want to stay in the village.

This shows surveys that the Joint Council of Rural Districts has conducted together with Forenet Kredit.

The chairman of the Joint Council of Rural Districts, Steffen Damsgaard, urges the government to establish a state support fund for general housing construction in rural villages with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants. (Photo: © Bo Amstrup, Ritzau Scanpix)

However, if there are no attractive rental homes, the elderly are left with two options:

Either to move to a larger city and thus contribute to the depopulation of the village or to stay put instead of selling to a family with children who have more need for the space.

And that is a shame, says Steffen Damsgaard.

- It's frustrating that there are people who want to move into something, but there's not really anyone who wants to build it. Therefore, we need to have the locks opened, so it can be done.

The same attitude has social and housing minister Sophie Hæstorp Andersen from the Social Democrats. In a written response, she writes:

- I agree that we should develop our rural villages.

- The government has just presented initiatives that give better opportunities for financing of general housing - among other things support for senior housing cooperatives and for the conversion of commercial properties into general housing, writes the minister.

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