‘Are you old guys?’, the documentary maker of asks Backlight. The group of seniors on scooters, who have gathered on the Dutch coast to roll through the dunes, watch the waves and eat an ice cream on the boulevard, don’t want to hear about it. No, they go out, go where they want and enjoy their freedom.
Typically older people today, says the Backlight-episode Going gray together. Everyone wants to grow old, but nobody wants to be old. Certainly not within the four walls of a care home that was once regarded as the crowning glory of the welfare state, but which is seen by seniors on wheels as ‘a prison’.
This reminded the makers of the Krasse Knarren by Van Kooten and De Bie in an excerpt from 1997. A 52-year-old leather-clad 52-year-old with a silver crest and braces complains about his ‘luxury apartment complex for sharp knurren in good standing’. His motorcycle doesn’t fit in the storage room. ‘Our natural life extension is completely ignored,” says the lad, sitting on his motorcycle.
The message is clear: no nursing home. But in the meantime we are in a big gray wave that will reach its peak in 2040, and with a huge staff shortage. All those people in need of care have to live somewhere. And so shows Backlightthe only program on Dutch television that can watch in the future, gives us the possibilities.
We see ready-made informal care homes for people with a large garden and wallet, a multi-generational house and flat, and: a Knarrenhof, where there is actually room for social tenants and buyers with a small budget. But most elderly people at an information evening in Oosterbierum don’t feel like moving, says the voice-over, not ‘as long as they are vital and are comfortable in that spacious, often already paid-off house, where you make the beds twice a year for the children who come to stay.
Another problem with enthusiastically devised solutions is the regulation. If no one wants to live in a nursing home, you have to make the system more humane. And the rules are changing that prohibit, for example, sharing a cake brought by family with other residents, says Teun Toebes, nurse and the only young person in the episode. ‘You can also ask another question: how would you like to live?’
A one-way ticket to Benidorm is also an option. In Dutch real estate agents on the costa (RTL5) young Dutch couples enlist the help of compatriots who preceded them. A classic commercial reality show combined with peeking at sunny holiday homes à la Dream house wanted. Real estate agents and project developers Eric-Jan and Daphne, nanny who have been promoted to betrothed, specialize, for example, in villas with a star football aesthetic. Think: pool bars, infinity pools, hot tubs and garages with facial recognition. You can’t get old in it, but it is nice to look at.