During the 1970s housing and social welfare policy as it affected the elderly was changing throughout Western society. Conventional high-rise apartments and institutionalized nursing or residential homes were no longer the sole public responses to housing the elderly. In place of these two extremes on the housing continuum was a variety of intermediate supportive systems that aided independent living. Assisted Independent Living (AIL) programmes were designed to keep the elderly in as independent a living environment as possible despite increasing functioning disabilities and frailties that often accompany advancing age.

Originally published in 1982, this book defines sheltered housing, traces its development in Western society and analyses its success under several variations in Great Britain. The British analysis focuses on those aspects of the sheltered housing programme that had wider relevance to the development of AIL housing policy in Europe and North America.