TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
I am 74 and realised that my health and mobility would eventually require a move from the country to a village, where there is a support network. The sheltered housing communities in Aberdeenshire supply that, in spades. Although a shadow of their former selves (when they had full time wardens and Sheltered Housing Officers were much more involved with the people they supported than paperwork and admin), they are still a critical part of the infrastructure of each village.
That critical part of village life is still very much needed, and I was planning to become part of it, in the area I have lived in for the past 25 years. Concurrent with the news about Aberdeenshire Council possibly closing the sheltered housing unit I was looking at, I was actually offered a property which I turned down – for
2 reasons – the uncertainty (if I moved in would I have to move out again in 2 months) and also the continued closure of Cuminestown Health Centre, which I had wrongly understood to have re-opened after Covid.
I would be happy to pay more rent for the security and support that sheltered housing supplies. But to close a sheltered housing unit (any of them) is a move that will split communities and cause untold mental suffering to people who are forced to move in their later years.
Monquhitter Matters 