Classification of (communal) housing typologies for independently living seniors in social housing; a Two Step Cluster analysis

Dutch housing associations focus on communal living with the aim of stimulating social interaction between (older) residents and strengthening cohesion. Although the added value of communal living for social interaction between residents has been discussed in the literature, there is still little known about the broad range of variants of communal living for seniors in the social rented sector. Therefore, it seems relevant to explore how socio-spatial factors of communal living that may stimulate social interaction are reflected in different variants of communal living in the Netherlands. Based on relevant influencing factors from the scientific literature, we performed an explorative cluster analysis in order to distinguish between variants of communal living with quantitative data from national housing association Woonzorg Nederland. As a result, four variants of social com-munal housing for seniors were identified. Some variants distinguish themselves mainly on the basis of spatial factors, while other variants mainly differ with regard to social and organizational factors. Strikingly, only two of these variants resemble the more intensive forms of communal living as described in the literature. There seems to be a discrepancy between communal living as described in the scientific literature and communal living as it occurs in Dutch social housing. The question of how the different variants of communal living relate to social interaction has yet to be answered.