Swedish town to integrate refugees by

housing them with pensioners

The first residents have moved into a new housing scheme that mixes seniors, young
people and foreigners who came to Sweden as unaccompanied minors seeking
asylum. They are required to socialize with each other.

The first time the young immigrant men met their future Swedish neighbors, it was Kristin
Ohman (photo above) who made contact.
"They were standing alone so I came over to meet them and I gave them some flowers," the
74-year-old smiles, as she remembers the gathering of the 70 people hand-picked to live in
her new apartment building. "They seemed a bit shy, but they were all very positive."
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The "SällBo" project in the Swedish city of Helsingborg aims to combat loneliness among
the elderly at the same time as helping former child refugees integrate by housing them
side-by-side in the same building. There are 31 flats for retired people and 20 for 18- to 25-
year-olds, ten of which are reserved for people who arrived in Sweden as unaccompanied
child asylum-seekers.
The project's name combines the word "sällskap," meaning company or togetherness, with
"bo," meaning to live, and under their contract, residents commit to socialize with each
other for at least two hours a week, helped along by a live-in social coordinator.
"It's not only the first in Sweden," says Dragana Curovic, an integration specialist at
Helsingborgshem, the city's municipal housing company. "Our constellation is unique
anywhere in the world."
Built as a home for seniors in the 1960s, the block became Sweden's largest housing facility
for unaccompanied child asylum-seekers in the aftermath of the 2015 European refugee
crisis.

The building has been a home for the elderly as well as for asylum-seekers before
Curovic and her colleague hatched the idea for their integration project two years later,
when considering whether to convert two floors back into assisted housing for the elderly
and leave the bottom level for young immigrants. In the end, they decided it would be better
to mix the groups together.
"We thought, 'okay, we have this house, and we have these needs, and we know that there
are a lot of lonely people. Why don't we do an integration project, where there are different
kinds of people?'"
Bridging generations and cultures
Curovic believes old people can feel cut off even if they frequently meet other pensioners.
"They easily feel excluded from their community because most of the information they have
comes either from people of their own age or from the media," she says. "So I think that
loneliness is not only sitting at home alone."
Immigrants to Sweden frequently end up living in highly segregated areas where more than
80 percent of people are first or second-generation immigrants. Those who arrived in
Sweden as unaccompanied child refugees often have no relationship at all with a Swedish
adult who has not been employed to look after them.
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"They have people from different government authorities, but it's difficult to make natural
relationships with adults," Curovic explains, "which means that in combination with the
cultural differences, their social life is limited to youngsters in a similar or the same
situation."
Her hope is that by meeting and working together with elderly Swedes, the young men will
improve their cultural understanding and absorb practical skills they would normally have
learnt from their parents. Former child asylum-seekers face a lot of stigma in Sweden, so
Curovic hopes the project will also help them understand that not everyone in Sweden views
them with suspicion.

Dragana Curovic (left) visits the arts and crafts atelier room in SällBo along with new resident Anki
Andersson
The first new residents began moving in at the end of November at the rate of two flats per
day. Those who arrived in Sweden as unaccompanied child asylum-seekers will be the last to
move in. The social program will then start in the New Year.
Ready for socializing
Ohman, who used to work in crisis preparedness for the local regional government, said she
had been drawn to the idea because she enjoys talking to the 20-something friends of her
daughter and her musician husband.
"I love hanging out with young people. Every Christmas I hang out with my daughter in
Gothenburg. They like people who don't fit into the box. No one was looking at the iPads or
phones. They were just hanging out."
But her daughter is more than 200 kilometers (125 miles) away in Gothenburg, and her son
is twice as far away, in Karlstad. So in the seven years since she retired, she had begun to
feel isolated in her city-center apartment.
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While the apartments in SällBo are small, there is a lot of shared space. There are two sitting
rooms on each floor, which have been converted into an art atelier, a yoga room, a library, a
board-games room, a gym and a computer games room. The kitchens, meanwhile, have
been themed for pickling, baking or growing herbs. The hope is that this will encourage
residents to move between floors.
Kalle and Anki Andersson, 85 and 70 respectively, moved from an apartment building 300
meters away, so they used to meet the young men living here when it was a refugee home.
"There were 98 child asylum-seekers here and we had no problems with them," Anki says.
"There were no disruptions whatsoever. They always were friendly and said 'hello.'"

Rosanna Simson's son Dante will be the youngest resident of SällBo

Like Ohman, the couple was drawn to the project by the prospect of sharing their lives with
younger people. "We think we will spend a lot of time socializing with them. We don't want
to live only with older people," she says. "I think we'll make a little coffee, sit here and hang
out and talk a little," Kalle adds. "We shall see."
Combating loneliness
Perhaps surprisingly, Curovic has found younger Swedes as interested in the project as elder
ones.
Since her son Dante was born 20 months ago, Rosanna Simson has been living at her
mother-in-law's house, but was worried about setting up on her own. "When we saw this, we
were really excited, because we thought we'd feel so lonely moving from a big family to a
one-bedroom flat with just the three of us," she explains.
"I love hanging out with elderly people. They're usually really talkative and they like telling
you about how it was then they were young. I think that's so sweet."
The project will run for two years, after which the company will decide whether to extend it
or whether to replace the flats for young people with more assisted housing for the elderly.
Whatever happens, Ohman is convinced that other municipalities in Sweden will copy it.
"There are so many people out there today who don't have anyone to hang out with," she
says. "We sit involuntarily alone in our flats. I think there will be more and more of this."
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