Member

It has certainly been in my business model—as the Minister likes to call it—to consider whether the property was suitable for ageing parents or family returning from overseas and, through rent or sale, to finance retirement and eventual residential care. Measured against those lifetime considerations, a missing criterion stands out: where a landlord or member of their family needs the property for a carer. I have a personal interest to declare here as a member of my wider family purchased the flat above theirs in a converted house with a downstairs flat and an upstairs flat specifically so that when their disabling condition deteriorates to the point of needing a full-time, on-call carer, it would be possible to situate the carer in that adjacent flat. Since investigating the issue, I have been made aware of others in similar positions. Not all properties are large enough or adaptable for a live-in carer, and not everyone—either the carer or someone who is cared for—wants that, either for privacy reasons or because they have family.