Homestay village and programmes available for retirees
04:46 AM Feb 20, 2012
WE REFER to Ms Julia Ng's letter "What retirement living should be" (Feb 18).
We agree that studio apartments for retirees are the antithesis of active ageing, as residents usually have to move from their previous housing environment, with the consequential loss of their network of old neighbours.
The lack of an additional room also deprives these retirees the pleasure of having grandchildren stay over for weekends and school holidays, let alone visits by other relatives.
In the past, when retirees sold their bigger flats for studio units, they soon found their cash surplus from the sale eroded by inflation and diminished by low interest rates for fixed deposits.
Worse, some parked their cash in stocks and suffered losses when the market took a plunge.
For these reasons, the Association of Management Corporations in Singapore developed the AMCIS HomeStay programmes in 2004 to enable seniors to remain in their bigger apartments, with the spare rooms used to host foreign students or senior tourists.
We have also developed the concept of a homestay village instead of the high-priced retirement village of other countries. Our homestay village requires apartments of at least two bedrooms as opposed to the studio units of a conventional retirement village.
Such a homestay village would include a small medical centre, gymnasium, swimming pool, library and other facilities suggested by Ms Ng.
For retirees who do not have spare rooms to participate in our homestay programmes, we have formed a new non-profit company, AMCIS Seniors, to help strengthen their financial wellness in the wake of the relentless price increases recently.
AMCIS Seniors will soon launch a group buying programme for seniors, a hallmark of the association's well-known collective purchasing for condominiums, in order to enjoy some economies of scale with the consequential reduction in prices.
We agree that studio apartments for retirees are the antithesis of active ageing, as residents usually have to move from their previous housing environment, with the consequential loss of their network of old neighbours.
The lack of an additional room also deprives these retirees the pleasure of having grandchildren stay over for weekends and school holidays, let alone visits by other relatives.
In the past, when retirees sold their bigger flats for studio units, they soon found their cash surplus from the sale eroded by inflation and diminished by low interest rates for fixed deposits.
Worse, some parked their cash in stocks and suffered losses when the market took a plunge.
For these reasons, the Association of Management Corporations in Singapore developed the AMCIS HomeStay programmes in 2004 to enable seniors to remain in their bigger apartments, with the spare rooms used to host foreign students or senior tourists.
We have also developed the concept of a homestay village instead of the high-priced retirement village of other countries. Our homestay village requires apartments of at least two bedrooms as opposed to the studio units of a conventional retirement village.
Such a homestay village would include a small medical centre, gymnasium, swimming pool, library and other facilities suggested by Ms Ng.
For retirees who do not have spare rooms to participate in our homestay programmes, we have formed a new non-profit company, AMCIS Seniors, to help strengthen their financial wellness in the wake of the relentless price increases recently.
AMCIS Seniors will soon launch a group buying programme for seniors, a hallmark of the association's well-known collective purchasing for condominiums, in order to enjoy some economies of scale with the consequential reduction in prices.
Source: TODAYonline
