Co-housing in the Netherlands. Living with friends as neighbors and neighbors as friends

Abstract

This subject of this research is the concept of co-housing, in relation to the process of ageing, in the Netherlands will be studied. To the greatest extent this is a qualitative research about the motives that people have to start living in a co-housing project and about the structures that determine how the process of ageing goes. The main motive that residents of co-housing projects cite is the living environment within the community. It can be said that the structures within co-housing projects do have an impact on the process of ageing, but they depend on various wishes of residents if perceived as advantage or disadvantage. To complete these two elements this research also contains a quantitative part that provides an overview of how co-housing is carried out in the Netherlands. On one hand how co-housing is distributed over the Netherlands with the use of maps and the location quotient, and on the other how much of Dutch co-housing lays a focus on the aspect of ageing with the use of a descriptive statistical analysis.