Older residents of Grolloo hope that the plans for the construction of care apartments can finally be implemented this year. There is a great shortage of houses for the elderly in the village and especially the oldest inhabitants have no time to lose.
For almost five years, volunteers from Grolloo have been working on plans for twelve life-resistant homes near the village hall. Somewhat impatiently they have been waiting for a few years for the green light from the municipality of Aa en Hunze. The houses are sorely needed.
“It’s like picking up an old tree and having to plant it somewhere else”, Roelof Dilling describes the current situation that many elderly people from Grolloo are now facing. “You take them out of their environment, where they have all their acquaintances and family, and they have to start over somewhere else in their old age.”
Dilling is chairman of the Grolloo Zorgt project group and has been involved in the plans for care homes in the village since the beginning. Grolloo has few houses that are perfectly suited for the elderly and there is no care home.
Elderly people in need of help must move if they can no longer live at home. To Rolde, Borger or Assen for example. “It’s not the end of the world, but people still prefer to live in their own village,” says Dilling.
(Text continues below the photo)