The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

https://unherd.com/2025/09/the-sordid-truth-about-retriement-villages/

by johngabbar • 10 months ago

122 129 10 months ago

I stopped when this modal popped up:

UnHerd and our 877 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store/access and process personal data on your device.

hnuser123456• 10 months ago

I've seen that wording a few times now in different places. I wonder who's aggregating all these smaller ad firms/data brokers.

SirFatty2• 10 months ago

I just toggle the JavaScript off...

dheera3• 10 months ago

I tried this but I found a lot of vile websites these days load the actual article with JS

dheera3• 10 months ago

I didn't even see that, I guess because I have both popups and cookies blocked (with exceptions for cookies on a few websites I actually log in to) so it's not like they could store data even if they wanted to. I don't need to know about their attempts that are going to fail anyway.

Ukv• 10 months ago

I didn't even see that, I guess because I have both popups and cookies blocked

The notice is likely EU (+ UK) specific for GDPR compliance, if you're elsewhere.

so it's not like they could store data even if they wanted to. I don't need to know about their attempts that are going to fail anyway

They're also using fingerprinting:

> "[...] together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it [...] Actively scan device characteristics for identification [...] certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) [...]"

If you're using something like Tor browser that does its best to hide those characteristics then you may be fine.

afavour3• 10 months ago

It provides you the option of rejecting all cookies, which is what I did.

Not that I'm defending this, it's all terrible. But how many of us reading this article about to stump up for a paid subscription for Unherd? I'd wager next to none.

dehugger• 10 months ago

Subscription to a random entity I've never heard of before, for one article? Hell no.

50 cents flat to read the whole article, without being harassed by aggressive ads or tracked by 900 different companies? I'd be more than willing.

gniv• 10 months ago

This is common but I haven't seen it so explicitly stated in the first popup.

You know how you are asked to agree to cookies even though you agreed recently on the same site? It's probably because they added a partner to the 1000 previous ones.

lenerdenator• 10 months ago

Is that surprising?

I gather this is about retirement villages in the UK; are retirement villages new there?

arethuza• 10 months ago

They aren't new - but they tend to be called things like "integrated retirement communities" or similar.

dominicq• 10 months ago

Better call Saul!

triceratops4• 10 months ago

Gimme Jimmy! He's the elder law specialist. Saul is the shady criminal lawyer.

gwbas1c2• 10 months ago

Wrong country! (Joke)

John238325• 10 months ago

Under capitialism, why would anyone think that this is anything but expected.

These living communities are meant to house you, until you die, for a price. You have saved up money to pay for that service until you die. Why would they leave money on the table? Why would they spend any extra on someone who's "going to die anyway". Someone who is barely ambulatory; who has few outside connections.

It's the horrible result of end stage capitalism, but it's hardly unexpected.

foobarian• 10 months ago

Why would they leave money on the table?

Because if they don't, the customer will go to the competition who does.

BobBagwill• 10 months ago

Ah, the "Perfect Competition" fallacy!

Digit-Al• 10 months ago

Ever heard of a confusopoly[1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly

John238325• 10 months ago

Customers who are elderly, obviously don't have others watching over them, and are mentally and/or physically degraded? You expect those customers to exercise the choice of the market?

The reality is that once that elderly person has moved to the retirement facility, they're pretty much a locked in customer. The firm (sadly) can pretty much do with them as they please within the extent of the law.

intended• 10 months ago

There are exceptions to this rule, and I am sure you are aware that all industries do not have the same ability to change providers, like say telecom.

You are NOT going to be changing houses and care homes very regularly past a certain age.

The animal that you pilot, will simply not have the capability to power through the change, remember every item, keep on top of documents, bills and more. You will not necessarily have friends and family to help you through this.

Going to court is unpleasant, since it will mean you are going to spend the rest of your life fighting. You may count on the fact that some portion of people will be fighters, and willing to sue, but thats statistic is of little comfort if you are the one fighting.

m0llusk• 10 months ago

Capitalism is a system. When you burn your food that is not end stage cooking, but a failure to manage cooking as a system. When your worn tires blow out while speeding causing you to fly off the road that is not end stage vehicular mobility, but irresponsible driving.

The last time Capitalism went unchecked and tried to eat itself was the Great Depression. That was ended by controlling Capitalism with strong regulations, high taxes on the rich, and pervasive union membership of workers. And the Social Security system and Medicare were also a part of that deal.

When people talk of "end stage Capitalism" all they are saying is that they lack the will and the power to use the tools we already know work to solve these problems.

n4r9• 10 months ago

Perhaps they're saying that the system inevitably evolves into a subset of the state space regardless of controls.

triceratops4• 10 months ago

Is there a reason to believe this wouldn't happen under other economic systems?

John238325• 10 months ago

Yes there is.

Wringing the elderly for profit would not happen under any other economic system because Capitalism is the only economic system which puts profit as the central motivation.

My understanding is the profit is purely a capitalistic idea. Feel free to prove me wrong.

toomuchtodo• 10 months ago

https://archive.today/YcLmj

https://web.archive.org/web/20250919141335/https://unherd.co...

rco87865• 10 months ago

Pretty sure we’re all being milked for profit. Thats kinda how this whole thing works.

thisisnotauser• 10 months ago

Maybe that's bad?

rco87865• 10 months ago

Possibly, but it's been the human condition ever since currency was invented.

ryandrake3• 10 months ago

Retirees are more likely than not to have built up at least a small pension or 401(k)[USA]: money sitting there earning interest and capital gains. You don't think the Aging Industry is going to just sit around and not try to grab as much of it as they can? They are going to do their best to ensure the system is set up to let them harvest those accounts dry.

stouset• 10 months ago

I would wager that’s exactly what the GP thinks.

It was pretty clear to me they think the entire system is set up so that anyone with needs is milked to extract the maximum possible amount of money.

rco87865• 10 months ago

Yea again, that's not different than anyone else with any other amount of money. For profit corporations are designed from the ground up to separate us from our money (or "milk" if you will).

In reading the article, it doesn't seem to me that anyone is being taken advantage of any more than all of us are when we walk into a shopping mall, open amazon.com, or buy a home.

notmyjob2• 10 months ago

Often by weaponizing elderly narcissism and exploiting cognitive decline in a quasi-legal fashion.

RajT88• 10 months ago

Everyone wants to grab whatever seniors have. I've seen it.

Children and other family squabble over the assets even before they pass. You'll see neighbors talking senile/demented seniors into giving away their stuff, or selling it for a silly low price (like a truck for a dollar, or my one neighbor asking my other neighbor for a free fishing boat). Then there's the scam calls...

ModernMech2• 10 months ago

That's the fun part about all of this. Boomers bought their houses for $30k in the 80s and today they're worth $3M. Sounds like they are set up comfortably for retirement and their millennial kids, who are pushing 40 and haven't been able to afford a house yet, are in for a nice inheritance.

Wrong! Because while their house is worth $3M, it will be fully leveraged to pay for the cost of their deathcare. Mom and dad will die broke in a retirement home, and your inheritance will be paying for their funeral out of your own pocket.

IAmBroom• 10 months ago

Nihilistic sarcasm makes you sound cool and knowledgeable! /s

felineflock• 10 months ago

https://archive.ph/YcLmj

elzbardico• 10 months ago

How unbounded greed destroys another great idea, chapter 2341131

thrill• 10 months ago

Guess what happens to industries that are not profitable.

FireBeyond• 10 months ago

“Would you give me a hand, sweetheart?”, she calmly asks, “Don’t touch her!” the bar manager snaps as I bend towards her. “You’re not allowed to touch her!” The woman blinks up at me, confused. “We have to call the care team — otherwise she could sue.”

As a paramedic, this galls me. As much as it galled me that many of these times, the "care team" (mostly LPNs) would call 911, for anything larger than a bandaid, or simple care tasks. Why? "Because of our policy/liability insurance", generally.

The worst part? Often the big sign out front. "Round the clock nursing care!" - and a bill to match.

parpfish• 10 months ago

i have a hard time feeling sympathetic to some of these stories.

their buy-back prices dont let them reap the windfall from the wild growth of housing prices? or that they're complaining about too many "old people" in a retirement home? they need to pay 5 quid for a beer?

loudmax• 10 months ago

Beware of generalizations, especially for cohorts of millions of people.

Surely, some of these people blocked development and did everything they could to boost their personal net worth at the expense of younger generations. Other people did the reverse. Most people just went with the flow and didn't bother to vote either way.

leoqa2• 10 months ago

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances.

I run a weekly route with MealsOnWheels and deliver food/perform wellness checks to many people whom are homebound. There are much worse fates for seniors than a community home with social programs and meal service.

I think it is everyone’s duty to buy long-term care insurance (perhaps the government should provide this, as we will all need it). I also believe you must provide for the retirement you expect.

notmyjob2• 10 months ago

The problem with LTC insurance is it’s likely to go belly up and you are at the end of the day dealing with an insurer whose business model involves denying valid claims. All of that is assuming you can actually get LTC insurance. Good luck if you are over 50. It’s like the private form of social security, a Ponzi that’s approaching its moment of truth.

leoqa2• 10 months ago

You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.

supportengineer• 10 months ago

Every insurer's business model involved denying valid claims.

By maximizing the float you can maximize risk-free returns

joules77• 10 months ago

Retirement is a stupid concept.

One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement.

The med-industrial complex is a run-away train that is detached for any moral system. It can't even produce any morality anymore. Because its not efficient or rational to do so :)

josefritzishere• 10 months ago

Some of us get old and tired. Retirement is a necessity. Your opinion will change with age on this one I expect. retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s. (1700s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement

stetrain• 10 months ago

Perhaps it's the idea that we all must work full time with 10 days of annual leave until we reach the point of needing pills and medical assistance to live comfortably that is the issue.

lo_zamoyski• 10 months ago

That depends. Retirement as passage into idleness? Sure. Many people who retire piss away the remainder of their lives because they don't know what to do with themselves. They get depressed, and they become lonely, because they become isolated. Children move away, spouses die, friends move away or die. Couple this with suburban planning where you can't do anything without a car (something the elderly are less likely to be able to operate) and where there is no town center, certainly not one congenial to the social life of the neighborhood or town. With the decline in church membership, you don't have that option anymore, one that also dealt with questions dealing with the end of life (if you view death as the absolute end, then your life was hopeless to begin with; retirement and old age simply strip distractions and illusions effectively).

But this is separate from the question of retirement as such, or the question of aging. Your grandfather, I presume, only refused to take medication and medical treatment, which falls under "extraordinary care", and this is morally licit. Had he refused food or offed himself intentionally (or with "assistance"), that would have been a different matter.

dh20223• 10 months ago

Are you volunteering yourself and your kids to not taking medication and seeing doctors in your old age? Or are you volunteering "other people"?

BeetleB2• 10 months ago

LTC is risky, as others have pointed out.

My company offers one that claims to be reliable (owned by an insurance company that's been around for over 100 years, albeit not in the LTC space).

The one thing I didn't like about them: They don't adjust for inflation. So if you sign up for a $100K plan, you'll get $100K - which will worth a lot less by the time I need it.

justmedep• 10 months ago

Isn’t that adjusting for inflation and not for cost of living?

red-iron-pine• 10 months ago

I think it is everyone’s duty to buy long-term care insurance (perhaps the government should provide this, as we will all need it)

this is called Social Security

ethbr1• 10 months ago

Demographics and decreased immigration would like a word...

jezzamon2• 10 months ago

Retirement villages seem particularly impacted by Baumol's cost disease. Combine that with aging societies and the general neglect often given to elderly people, I'm not optimistic about us being able to provide a reasonable quality of life for our elders in the future...

rangestransform• 10 months ago

Anything that has less productivity increase than the most productive sector of the economy is subject to cost disease to some degree

mrguyorama2• 10 months ago

It's not Baumols cost disease, it's a completely captured audience.

You are getting older and can't take care of yourself. You worked hard your entire life so you have non-zero assets.

Your options are: Sign away everything you have and more to a company in the hope that they will take care of you according to the contract. Or die in your own filth or from tripping and falling in the tub.

Medicare doesn't take care of you until you are destitute, so your only option is to pay whatever a company is asking.

These companies charge $20k a month, but pay their actual laborers peanuts, like we are talking hourly wages that are barely competitive with good construction jobs despite requiring training and spending all day literally wiping down human shit. You will be lucky to have one employee taking care of 30 of you.

All that money is just fed back to shareholders. And building real-estate in the priciest parts of built up cities. Grandma literally can't leave the facility because she's got the dementia and the kids are all in another state so why even build the facility in the middle of a city with skyrocketing housing costs and real-estate prices? Because your clients will pay anything, and that will leave you with a great high value asset that a facility out in a cheaper area would not.

It's just a neat little system for ensuring all those savings and retirement accounts built up by the boomers will not be inherited, and instead will be captured by very very wealthy people.

What possible mechanism could there even be for downward pressure on prices in this system? What are you going to do, NOT need help in your old age?

jezzamon2• 10 months ago

I'm reminded of the recent article about hospitals owned by private equity. I guess a fair system would allow people to not be locked in to one place so they could leave and move into a better one?

dash2• 10 months ago

I read the article and didn't actually see any evidence that this is not a reasonably fair and functional system. I did read:

* People complaining that the cafe wasn't as good as they liked.

* The fact that old people have signed up for a retirement village.

* The fact that some of them get confused and need help.

What's the evidence base here?

cpncrunch• 10 months ago

Exactly. I just tried fact checking the "milking" bit. Looking up lists of care home groups, Allegra Care came up first. Looking at their financial statements (all public, and include full details of profit and loss, thanks to UK company law), their profit in 2024 was 30k, and in 2023 they had a 300k loss. So not exactly milking!

I think running a care home isn't a great way to make a huge profit.

lstodd• 10 months ago

If your company shows profit in official reports you must fire your CFO.

gwbas1c2• 10 months ago

The kind of facility and services provided are quite expensive.

What I think is more frustrating is that they aren't upfront about the costs; although I think many of the residents wouldn't live there if they were upfront about the costs, even though they can afford it.

Otherwise, it seems like some very basic reform about explaining costs is needed, and some reform to prevent episodes like the lady laying on the floor for 45 minutes.

teo_zero• 10 months ago

Maybe the buy-back scheme?

when he dies, the company will buy back his share from his next of kin for less than he originally paid.

deadbabe• 10 months ago

If we could milk unemployed people for profits we would have unemployment villages too I bet.

No job? No life? Stay here eating, sleeping and fucking around until some opportunity comes up.

dredmorbius2• 10 months ago

Sloppy editing?

Residents face service charges averaging £524 a month, on top of ground rents that can exceed £500 a year.

£500 a year would be implausibly low. I suspect a few missing nils or a thousands indicator.

fludlow• 10 months ago

Ground rent is a bizarre UK property law concept. The resident will have paid for the leasehold of the property (typically a one off payment for 99 years occupancy which is transferable if they want to sell to someone else) but the company retains the freehold and can charge ground rent in return for absolutely nothing (this is different to a service charge which would fund things like communal space/facilities upkeep). This arrangement sort of makes a tiny bit of sense for apartments if you're being generous about it but there was a scandal in the UK that lots of regular houses were being sold leasehold not freehold with ground rent that started at a token level but ramped up significantly above inflation

dredmorbius2• 10 months ago

Thanks!

dkarl• 10 months ago

The only thing really disturbing thing I read in the piece is this:

a yell cuts through the noise; an older lady has fallen by the serving hatch and is unable to stand unassisted. “Would you give me a hand, sweetheart?”, she calmly asks, “Don’t touch her!” the bar manager snaps as I bend towards her. “You’re not allowed to touch her!” The woman blinks up at me, confused. “We have to call the care team — otherwise she could sue.” And so, for the next 45 minutes, she lies there

That's nothing to do with profit. Nonprofit and government-run facilities are just as strict about following legally dictated rules to illogical and counterproductive results as for-profit facilities are.

I'm actually impressed that the author found so little to complain about.

On the supposed topic of profiteering, the article is frustratingly light on analysis. It's presented like it's going to be an exposé, but then he gets distracted by his own discovery of the horrors of aging:

it’s hard to feel sentimental when I recall my own experiences: shepherding confused residents to the toilet; placing cones beside rogue deposits in the restaurant; mopping up suspicious puddles (custard, John Smiths, or other); nudging care teams about overstuffed stoma bags; and politely reminding people of where exactly they live
It strikes me that no matter the service charge, or the quality of the restaurant — which John chides as “more like a backstreet cafe” — or whether privately owned or council-housed, you may still end up defecating onto your shoe in the middle of a bistro. No amount of ground rent can protect your dignity when there is an intrinsic lack of it in ageing
“How’s Harry?” I ask. “Dead.” “Helen?” “Dead.” “Lucy?” “In care.” “Pirate Paul?” (he wore an eye-patch and a cap with an anchor on it.) “Dead, I found him.” “Mary One?” “Alive.” “Mary Two?” “Nope.” “Bombay Jan?” “In the bar.” “Little John?” “Had a fall”.

It might have been a better article if he had spared us his personal feelings about aging -- his most interested readers have nothing to learn from him on that topic -- and dedicated those inches to the economics. All he manages to tell us is that people are paying quite a bit, which means nothing in isolation. Are there examples of how it can be done for less?

It also glosses over some details that seem important for analyzing cost and comparing to alternatives, like what level of assistance is provided, though I'm American and this is perhaps not an issue for British readers. (The existence of "care teams" that attend to falls and stoma bags shows that "independent living" means something different in this context than in an American one.)

Speaking as someone with an aging parent who will likely need some kind of daily assistance in the 5-10 years if not sooner, the picture painted by the article doesn't sound like a bad way for my mom to spend her remaining years. I'm not seeing the "sordid reality" the headline promises.

The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

Related Stories