Seniors’ Housing Stability Solutions Lab

What problem is the lab trying to solve?

The Seniors Services Society of BC and its partners are conducting a Solutions Lab that aims to answer the question: What might help low-income senior renters stay in their housing and “age in the right place”? By addressing the non-income-related issues that seniors face, the lab will identify sustainable community housing options and services. The lab will act as a space to pool knowledge and give seniors and the people that serve them a space to create and test ideas. The desired result would be a preventative approach that involves all players in seniors housing, from renters, to landlords, government and service providers.

Project scope and expected outcomes

How will the lab be conducted?

The Seniors’ Housing Stability lab will use an innovation technique called human-centered design and systems thinking. To do this, the project team will put together a challenge brief that explains important research and background information to the lab participants. They will then host four workshops that build upon each other:

1. The first workshop will explore the question ‘how might we’ do better to help seniors age-in-place with success.
2. The second will look at multiple ways to solve this problem.
3. In the next workshop, participants will start picking and testing some of these solutions.
4. The last workshop will be for refining the solutions and making sure that these ideas are implemented.

Between each workshop, the RADIUS solutions lab consultant will coach the participants as they test and refine their ideas. The final output will be a roadmap that explains the solutions the lab developed and how it can be used by other similar groups.