Gina Sylvestre

Local Social and Service Environments of an Urban Housing Market for Seniors

Abstract Specialized seniors’housing submarkets and their spatial forms in urban areas constitute distinctive and dynamic “landscapes of old age”. In the context of the government-subsidized senior citizen apartment (SCA) market of the city of Winnipeg, Canada, this paper offers an exploratory investigation of key components of the local neighborhood housing project environments in terms of social composition and service provision. The following three specific research questions are addressed. First, to what extent is the distribution of SCA units in the city geographically associated with the distribution of low-income elderly persons in the city? Second, to what extent does proximity to key off-site local service outlets differ between SCA projects located in the inner city and in the suburbs? Third, how do residents of SCA projects located in the inner city and the suburbs evaluate and utilize their local service environments? The data are elicited from published sources, field observations, and focus group interviews, and are analyzed using both descriptive spatial statistics and qualitative methodology. In relation to the first research question, the findings disclose a moderate tendency for SCA units to be over-represented in the inner city relative to the spatial distribution of low-income elderly people. With regard to the second research question, the results reveal that SCA projects located in the inner city typically enjoy greater proximity to key off-site services compared to suburban SCA projects. The findings related to the third research question disclose that although both inner city and suburban SCA residents are aware of the advantages and drawbacks of their respective local service environments, they are at least partly able to mitigate accessibility problems by adopting various supportive strategies (e.g., travel as passengers in cars or use of public transit). It is proposed that these supportive strategies are part of a wider process of residential adjustment in specialized seniors’ housing. To conclude, the implications of the findings for the development of more accommodative environmental settings for senior housing are also discussed.