Retirement villages are an increasingly popular senior housing option
that aims to comprehensively integrate accommodation, care services,
social activities and interaction opportunities for ageing people. The
research literature about retirement villages and communities is
extensive, but less studied are the contextually varying spatial, legal
and political processes of how such villages and other intermediate
housing-with-care solutions for older people are initially constituted,
especially in novel national and local contexts. In this paper, a
spatio-legal approach is employed to study the many legal possibilities
and barriers that have arisen while developing retirement villages in
Finland. As a specific case, I examine the new Finnish Virkkulankylä
retirement village concept and its implementation process. As the key
result of my study, I identify three major spatio-legal barriers to
developing retirement villages and other intermediate senior housing
solutions, which are (a) the polarised division between the fields of
elderly care and housing in both law and practice, (b) the prevalence of
‘local law’ in spatial planning and service provision for elderly
people, and (c) the inflexible funding system regarding alternative
housing-with-care solutions for seniors. I argue that although the
‘in-betweenness’ of retirement villages may facilitate a more
comprehensive understanding about the housing and care of older adults,
in practice their intermediary position translates into many ambiguities
and challenges.