Hong Kong will need 48 new elderly care homes every year unless demand is cut now, expert warns
Academic says ‘ageing in place’ – allowing people to stay in their homes and communities – is not a choice but a must
Hong Kong will need to build close to 50 care homes for the elderly each year in the future unless it acts now to cut demand by providing more community care, a social welfare expert has warned.
Dr Law Chi-kwong, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s department of social work and social administration, said only a dozen subsidised homes would be needed to cater for the fast-greying population if the city could reduce demand by 1 per cent each year.
“If we cannot reduce the current demand rates for subsidised elderly residential care homes, by 2041, each year we would have to build 47 to 48 homes with 100 places each just to meet the annual increase in demand, not mentioning the likely extremely long queues that would have accumulated by that time,” Law said.
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He said the proportion of people aged 85 or above would grow from 2.2 per cent in 2014 to 10.1 by 2064. “This is not sustainable and basically impossible.”