After years of discussing how to age well, a group of retired people is building the first French residential co-op for seniors. (Photo: Allan Leonard / Flickr)
They didn’t want to end up in a traditional retirement home. They wanted to remain the actors in their own lives. Seven years after their first discussions about how to age well, a group of retired people is starting to build the first co-op for the aging. Non-speculation, democracy and environmental concern are the foundations of the “Chamarel-Les Barges” project, located in a neighborhood of Vaulx-en-Velin, east of Lyon, France. The project is so inspiring that the bank has even conferred a 50-year loan to the founders, who are in their 60s.
The rendezvous was set for the 15th floor in a Vaulx-en-Velin apartment building in the suburbs of Lyon. That’s the location for the headquarters of the Chamarel Association (also known as the Residents’ Cooperative Housing Residence of East Lyonnais) created in 2010, prompted by the first French co-op for older people.
Patrick, Janine, Hélène, Luc and Jean finish up their meeting with a retired couple interested in their housing co-op project. The site where construction began in December 2015 is 10 minutes away on foot. The 16 accommodations and associated public spaces should be complete by mid-2017. It will be one of the first housing co-ops for retired people.
Everything began seven years earlier from a discussion between two friends about the problems of those they knew who had not made plans for their older years. “Soon, several of us got together saying that perhaps we needed to talk about it so as not to aggravate our kids,” remembers Patrick, a retired elementary school teacher.
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