The impact of facilities management on the quality of life of middle-class elderly in Hong Kong : a case study of The Tanner Hill

Abstract

Ageing population is a global phenomenon in the 21st century, people are living longer around the world. Hong Kong is facing a more serious situation, the population at aged 60 or above will increase from 22.7 % in 2016 to 30.9 % in 2026, and 35.4 % in 2036. In 2018, the life expectancy of male and female in Hong Kong was 82.17 and 87.56 respectively, becoming the longest life expectancy in the world. If the elderly problem is not solved, it will bring huge burden to society. On the contrary, appropriate living environment with supportive facilities can facilitate them to reduce the decline of health and benefit to society. Today, elderly people can no longer rely on their offspring to take care of them and have to live on their own. They are all afraid of becoming residents of the Residential Care Home for the elderly. Ageing-in-Place is their ultimate goal to live in a familiar environment with dignity, privacy and non-discrimination, as advocated in the 2000s’ policy principle of “Ageing-in-Place as core; institutional care as back-up”. Ageing-in-place is not only the best way to accommodate the elderly, but also the most cost-effective way to society. More than 60% of one million elderly aged 60 or above are living in private residential housing. Their needs have been neglected and they were defined as middle-class elderly in this study. The Tanner Hill is an ideal elderly housing for middle-class elderly and expected to inspire other organizations to follow. However, there was contradictory views between Hong Kong Housing Society’s (HKHS) research and other researches in terms of residents’ satisfaction. In view of the declining health condition, elderly people rely heavily on the immediate facilities provided in their residing housing estate to maintain and enhance their Quality of Life (QoL) in six aspects, i.e. independence, living environment, physical health, psychological health, social relationship, and overall QoL. All facilities management components including space management facilities, building service facilities and supporting facilities were validated to be positively related to the elderly QoL, except noise negatively related to the elderly QoL. As a result, the research questions of this study were “to what extent the QoL of middle-class elderly was affected by facilities management components either inside or outside their residing units or in the luxury club house”, and “whether the numerous facilities management components in the luxury club house were over-provided”. An on-site face-to-face questionnaire survey was conducted in The Tanner Hill by a random stratified sampling. It was found that the impact of facilities management on the elderly QoL was significantly different among the facilities inside or outside the residing units, and the luxury club house, as well as among three groups of elderly, i.e. young-old elderly (aged 60-69), old-old elderly (aged 70 to 79) and oldest-old elderly (aged 80 or above). The result found that The Tanner Hill successfully met the needs of middle-class elderly. However, only to some extent the elderly QoL was affected by the facilities outside their residing units, and there were many facilities in the luxury club house that were beneficial to the elderly based on extensive research, but actually useless to most residents.