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.