Stockholm baby joins retirement home waiting list

A one-year-old baby has become the youngster Stockholm resident to join the queue for one of the city’s most popular retirement homes. Although it is becoming increasingly common for Swedes to secure their old age accommodation in their thirties or forties, the latest applicant for a room at the Blomsterfonden senior assisted living apartments has taken the organisation by surprise.

”We have a grandmother living with us who is very happy and she has placed both her children and her grandchildren in the queue,” spokeswoman Christel Jansson told the tenants’ association magazine, Hem & Hyra journal.

The non-profit organisation, which has 1,000 pensioner apartments in the Swedish capital, currently has a waiting list of around 21,000 people. The one-year-old has now broken the record as the youngest, but most of those queuing are middle-aged women.

“They want someone to look after them,” Jansson told the journal, adding that women want to guarantee they have support if left on their own in later life.

The current waiting time is said to be between 10 and 20 years, but the Blomsterfonden organisation says it will build more apartments to cope with the increasing demand.