Home alone in Basel

The proportion of one-person households in canton Basel City increased from 21% in 1960 to 45% in 1990. It is set to climb to over 50% by 2050. Keystone

One-person households account for 47% of all households in canton Basel City – the Swiss average is 36%. A quarter of the city canton’s population live alone. The authorities have launched a strategy to combat loneliness and raise awareness of a tricky issue that affects both young and old.

An autumn morning. Sunlight streams into Esther Janine Zehntner’s apartment. The view over Basel from her four-room, sixth-floor flat at the edge of the city’s Iselin district is wonderful. “Life is good. I have always lived alone without this necessarily having been my goal,” explains the former school teacher.

Esther Jeanine Zehntner in her flat in Basel. She has always lived alone. And today she says without hesitation: “I’m living well.” Stéphane Herzog

Esther spent almost ten years with the World Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Africa. “A piece of my heart belongs to Africa,” she says, recounting the development work she did there. The 82-year-old goes for walks around Basel every day to keep fit. She enjoys walking along the Rhine and through Basel Zoo. She has a group of friends with whom she goes to the theatre, attends concerts and visits museums.

Does she, like a growing number of other people in Swi­tzerland, sometimes feel lonely? The country has an ageing popu­lation. Divorces are on the up. In canton Basel City, around a quarter of the population – 50,000 people – live alone. One-person households account for 47% of all Basel households, which means that 53% are multi-person households, equating to 150,000 people.

Cantonal measures

The proportion of one-person households in Basel City increased from 21% in 1960 to 45% in 1990. It is set to climb to over 50% by 2050. “There are ways to measure social isolation, but quantifying loneliness is difficult,” says Lukas Ott, head of the Office of Cantonal and City Development in Basel City. Ott is responsible for implementing a motion that was submitted in the Basel City cantonal parliament by the Social Democratic Party politician Pascal Pfister in 2023. Some CHF150,000 ($166,699) is due to be set aside for voluntary projects from 2025 onwards as part of a cantonal strategy to combat loneli­ness.

“Basel City needs to offer new ways for people to come together,” stresses Ott, aware that the city canton has a large number of elderly people, hospitals, and care homes.

In 2023, the canton sent a letter to all elderly people living alone. The letter contained two phone numbers – one offering information on ways to meet other elderly people in Basel (“Info älter werden”), the other providing simple conversation and support for lonely people (“Mein Ohr für dich”).

Loneliness not only affects the elderly. A third of all one-person households in Basel City comprise people aged between 20 and 40. Young people are more mobile and more connected with other people than they used to be, says Ott. But their relationships with each other are more fragile.

“The quality and depth of connection matters,” he says. Social isolation is a difficult subject. “We know of the effect it has on the elderly, but we find it hard to accept that younger people can feel lonely.”

If many people live alone, encounters outside in public spaces become important, as here on the Rhine promenade. Keystone

Baby-boomer blues

We chat to Gottfried* on the phone. The 60-year-old has two grown-up children. He and his wife have been living apart for the last ten years or so. Gottfried has a background in culture. Work dried up during Covid-19 for many self-employed people, and he had to readjust. He talks openly about his loneliness and many of his friends and acquaintances being fellow divorcees.

Life has become tougher for the baby-boomer generation. Even highly educated people are suddenly having to rely on income support. “People at my age don’t want to be single,” says Gottfried. They don’t want to be alone, but neither do they want to give up their independence or high standard of living. This is a contradiction. “So everyone stays lonely. They think life goes on for forever.”

Gottfried would like to meet someone like-minded of the opposite sex and believes it has become harder for men and women to connect. “I no longer have the confidence to catch a woman’s eye, let alone start talking to her.”

Ways to meet are few and far between for 60-somethings, though Tinder is one of them. “I know a lot of women who have a profile on Tinder, but talking to them about loneliness would be a step too far in real life,” he says. On the whole, Gottfried thinks that his quality of life has deteriorated without a partner. “The two of us could share our problems and talk about them.” He would love to start a new relationship – at an age when you become physically weaker and your parents start to die.

A quiet home, a lively environment: even the Tinguely Fountain on Basel’s Theatre Square is full of noise and movement. Keystone

Lots of single women

Around 75% cent of people on income support in Basel live alone or in care homes, according to the cantonal government. The number of one-person households is increasing including among the younger generation, as families with children forsake the city for somewhere quieter. “The canton is promoting services and infrastructure more tailored to young families,” says Melanie Imhof, a spokeswoman for the cantonal government. 

“Many highly qualified women delay living with a partner,” explains Luca Pattaroni, who is a professor at the Urban Sociology Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).

The property sector has spotted a gap in the market and started to develop co-living solutions such as one-room apartments in buildings with shared communal spaces.

“If you build apartment blocks without anywhere for residents to interact apart from the stairs and lift, it limits social contact even more,” says Thomas Pfluger, who manages a national loneliness prevention scheme called “connect!”.

Pattaroni cites the example of cooperatives that have created communal areas in their building. He also mentions the idea of co-living clusters, which are shared dwelling units consisting of private studios and communal areas.

“Loneliness can lead to depression,” the professor says. “It is a key factor in our concerns regarding mental health.”

Does Basel have more lonely people than anywhere else in Switzerland? Thomas Pfluger: “The people of Basel see themselves as a convivial bunch who value tradition. Take the city’s famous carnival or autumn fair, for example.”

*Name has been changed

This report first appeared in Schweizer RevueExternal link.