In Quebec, incredible but true, the number of accommodation resources available for seniors is in worrying decline at a time when our nation, distinct even in its demographics, displays one of the highest aging rates of its population in the world.
Not a month goes by without a heartbreaking story of a closed or transformed private seniors’ residence (RPA) leaving elderly people behind, forced to relocate in a context of vulnerability. These repetitive scenarios are unworthy of what Quebec aspires to.
A little lesson in demography to set the table and see what exactly we’re talking about. In May 2023, the Quebec Statistics Institute, in its Portrait of seniors in Quebec, reported that, according to the latest available data (2021), those aged 65 and over constituted 20% of the population of Quebec. In 1971, they were only 7%. According to demographers’ forecasts, this segment of the population will reach 26% in 2041.
Meanwhile, available housing resources for this age group are dwindling. Even though more than 87% of those aged 65 and over were staying at home in 2021-2022 (according to data compiled by the Commissioner for Health and Wellbeing in her Portrait of accommodation organizations and living environments in Quebec), it is then towards RPAs that seniors turn (9.4%), and finally towards residential and long-term care centers (CHSLD), for 1.7% of the group. Among those aged 75 and over, 80% live at home, compared to 15% in RPAs.
RPAs therefore constitute the most natural and desirable link between life at home and the transition to CHSLDs. A transition that allows you to “live at home” while receiving certain services. Responding in a varied manner to the various needs expressed by residents depending on their autonomy, these homes very often offer meal services, leisure activities and also health care. They seem to meet an essential housing need, but these precious places unfortunately melt away like snow in the sun.
The Quebec Regroupment of Private Seniors’ Residences sounded the alarm again last week after the recent closure of two other RPAs. He speaks of a “massacre” to describe the fact that, from 2,300 in 2008, there are now only 1,398 RPAs. To explain this bloodletting for which seniors are paying the price, the group points to the increase in requests certification and regulation that owners are struggling to cope with, glaring labor shortage problems, particularly in the health sector, and the financial burden of inflation and increases in interest rates .
All of this contributes to inflating the bills that are passed on to the tenants of these residences, many finding themselves helpless in the face of these increases. The portrait painted by the Institute of Statistics of Quebec reveals that “the median individual after-tax income of seniors is $27,900 in 2020, or $34,200 for men and $24,100 for women,” which leaves little room for maneuver in the face of housing whose monthly cost exceeds $2,500, without services or health care.
This is without taking into account a vague phenomenon whereby owners decide to give their RPAs a facelift by transforming them into rental condos, which has the effect of throwing seniors onto the street.
In a gloomy landscape where, according to the Quebec Association of Retirees from the Public and Parapublic Sectors, some 2,500 elderly people suffered eviction from their RPA between 2022 and 2023, let us note the brightening represented by the victory of the seniors of the Mont-Residence. Carmel against their owner, Henry Zavriyev: after two years of fighting an attempted eviction, the 47 seniors benefiting from services learned that the RPA vocation of their building would finally be maintained.
Last January, in a context of an epidemic of RPA closures relayed endlessly by the media, the Minister responsible for Seniors, Sonia Bélanger, announced a special envelope of $200 million over five years precisely intended to offer retirement residences 30 housing units and less a personalized allowance compensating the costs per person of care and services. This one-off assistance was intended to avoid passing the bill on to residents.
Each place lost in RPA is associated with a human tragedy, that of a person finding themselves homeless, the supreme incarnation of stability and security, at a time in their life when an upheaval called moving can turn them upside down.
Quebec has a fundamental need for these transitional living environments, which translate into reality the need for seniors to stay in a place resembling home. In this context, it is distressing to note that so few actions are being taken to encourage people to stay at home by allowing the use of services and care, while experts and advisory organizations have been repeating for years that it is This would act as a royal road.