Driven by growing loneliness among pensioners, as well as abuse scandals in French care homes, a group of seniors in the south-west of the country decided to take matters into their hands – moving in together to prove that retirement doesn't mean retreating from society.
Their experiment is La Ménardière, a shared living project in the village of Bérat, 40km from Toulouse.
On a Saturday lunchtime, six of the 12 current members gather around a large oak table in the kitchen. They've all helped prepare the meal. A fire crackles in the hearth.
Over roast chicken, pumpkin and a glass or two of red wine, the conversation turns to the subject that brought them together – the desire to avoid a nursing home.
“It’s like a prison for old people,” says 66-year-old Sylvie Vetter, who moved in a year ago.
Geneviève Ducurty, who spent years working as a nurse in care homes, nods in agreement. "There isn't enough time or money, you can no longer take care of people properly."
Their comments echo recent research that found as many as 80 percent of people in France have a negative image of retirement homes, reflecting what the authors describe as “collective anguish” about growing old in a system seen as “ill adapted, dehumanised and on its last legs”.
Alternative to institutional care
This kind of shared anxiety is what led to the setting up of La Ménardière. The project is the brainchild of Anne-Marie Faucon and Michel Malacarnet, who 30 years ago founded the Utopia cooperative of independent cinemas.
Their aim is simple and radical: to live and grow old together, contributing to society for as long as possible, and to delay – or avoid – the moment when people are forced into institutional care.
The idea emerged in 2018. “There was an article in Le Monde saying France mistreats its elderly," says Faucon.
A few months later, after a public showing of the film All Together, a comedy about an alternative living experiment in which a group of ageing friends move in together, she and Malacarnet sprang into action.
In 2019, they took out loans to buy La Ménardière – a late 18th-century, three-storey mansion in the centre of Bérat, a small town of 3,000 people – for €1.1 million.
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'A place where we move forward'
The ground floor is communal, with a kitchen, sitting rooms, a meeting room, a library and a cinema screening room. Upstairs are individual apartments. The 2.5-hectare grounds include a swimming pool, gym and vegetable garden and are home to a few chickens.
Vetter, who moved in after her divorce, has 31 square metres to herself – a small kitchen, a bathroom and a large room. "I also have access to the entire garden, the whole ground floor and the swimming pool,” she says. “I was looking for a new life project, really. I wasn’t thinking about old age. When I arrived here, what mattered to me was building something.”
That isn't just about growing old together in shared housing. The community also works on cultural projects, and there's an explicitly political dimension.
"We're trying, perhaps, to change the world a little – to give people ideas and to create connections. It is not just a project for older people; it is for society as a whole.”
Malacarnet, who at the age of 83 is the oldest of the residents, moves slowly between the rooms, but his fighting spirit is undimmed. He describes La Ménardière as a house “on the offensive”.
“The concept of retirement implies defeat, whereas until now we’ve always been on the offensive, and that’s synonymous with victory,” he says. “This isn’t a retirement home. It’s a place where we move forward, where we want to help build a new world.”
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Fairer economic model
The 2023 book Les Fossoyeurs ("The Gravediggers"), which exposed abuse of the elderly in some of France's biggest care homes, reinforced Faucon and Malacarnet's conviction that there had to be an alternative to the profit-driven care home industry.
"The book showed there's a real problem in France, money is being made off the backs of old people. Very often, many care homes offer services that simply don’t live up to the prices they charge," says Faucon.
"So our idea was to think about an economic model that’s fairer, more respectful of people and that allows those who don’t necessarily have a lot of money to have something better and more pleasant.”
Each member pays an entry fee of €20,000, plus €70,000 to help repay the loans and fund renovation. That sum is returned when they leave, or to their family in the event of their death. Accommodation is rented at €14 per square metre per month.
Eric and Brigitte Cabot have opted to build their own home on one of the plots in the park.
“We’ve never lived in an apartment so I think it would be too difficult for us,” says Eric. Their house will cost them around €1,100 a month to rent, which he says is "a competitive rate for this area".
The couple were drawn to the project after watching their own parents die in difficult conditions.
“It was very stressful, we wanted to spare our own children the same thing,” says Eric. “When one of us goes, we won’t be alone, there’ll be a community there,” adds Brigitte.
Everyone is expected to contribute to running La Ménardière according to their abilities. Eric, a former engineer, brings his skills in mechanics, electricity, maintenance, the internet and accounting. Brigitte is a keen gardener.
She's realistic about the challenges of shared living. “We have disputes, but we try to find solutions, we are tolerant of one another’s differences.”
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Open to the community
La Ménardière isn't an isolated enclave and residents engage with the wider community. Two rooms are rented out on a bed and breakfast basis, bringing in much needed revenue. Schoolchildren come and do cross country running in the park, and the outdoor stables are used for concerts, plays and monthly film screenings in the summer. In winter, the events move inside.
A major study in 2024 showed an estimated 12 percent of people in France said they felt lonely, and increasingly so with age. Malacarnet says reaching out is also part of their mission.
“Some of the people who come and see us seem to be suffering so deeply from loneliness that we tell ourselves we’re fighting for them too, so that they have the right to exist. So this is also a project against loneliness.”
The residents, however, are under no illusion about what lies ahead. Illness and loss of independence are inevitable. Ducurty, the former district nurse, says the location was chosen carefully with this in mind.
“We deliberately chose a place in a town that isn’t isolated, where there’s a medical centre, a pharmacy and home care services. We’re aware that we’ll need outside help and won’t be able to do everything ourselves,” she says.
But they want to delay the nursing home option for as long as possible. “The idea is that, in this place, we’ll support one another,” she says. "When Michel or Brigitte can no longer come to film screenings, we’ll go and play cards or watch films with them in their rooms.”
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'A utopian dream'
La Ménardière can house up to 20 residents. The selection process to become one is rigorous. Candidates stay for trial weekends and, if they decide to join, then complete a six-month probation period.
Anna Gilmartin, a 74-year-old former social worker from the UK with an Irish passport, is strongly tempted by the project and spent a week there in November.
“I’ve lived in Buddhist communities in England and in France, I like community living. The cultural side of La Ménardière is also a major pull.”
However she’s still hesitating. “I’m not sure what I could bring to the project. I’m not very robust and they need robust people." The lack of public transport in Bérat, she adds, is "also an issue".
For Faucon, this uncertainty is all part of the experiment. “It’s a modest and slightly crazy dream. A utopian dream, really,” she says.
“Will we succeed? We don’t know. But what matters is trying to move towards the best possible relationships, and to support one another for as long as we can, so that the end of life is a gentle one.”
