OLDS – Newly-announced financial supports designed to address rising cost of living pressures for seniors living in designated supportive living and long-term care facilities is welcome, says Stacey Stilling, the chief administrative officer with Mountain View Seniors' Housing (MVSH).
“This is certainly a positive initiative and one that is appreciated by those living or operating in the seniors housing industry,” said Stilling. “What we need to keep in mind though, is these cost and income pressures are not going to be quickly resolved.
“We need to ensure we continue to talk and come up with ideas which can be acted upon to support those who need it, not only now but as we navigate into the future.”
Announced July 27, $11 million in additional provincial funding will be available between Nov. 1 and June 30 to help deal with inflationary increases to accommodation costs.
As of Nov. 1, residents’ accommodation charges will only increase by 3.2 per cent, instead of 2022’s rate of five per cent. The provincial government will pay operators the remaining 2.3 per cent on behalf of residents.
“We recognize inflation is affecting everyone, especially residents and operators of continuing care,” Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping said in a new release announcing the new funding.
“Operators are experiencing much higher costs this year due to the higher inflation rate and we are taking extra measures to support residents in publicly-funded continuing care homes by subsidizing a portion of their accommodation costs for the year.”
MVSH owns and operates seniors lodges in Olds, Didsbury, Carstairs and Sundre, as well as other residential facilities.
Accommodation charges reflect the cost of providing such things as resident rooms, meals and meal as well as housekeeping services, utilities, routine building maintenance, general administration and laundering of towels and linens.
David Shepherd is the NDP’s opposition health critic.
“Providing a partial subsidy to rising accommodation charges is insufficient to help seniors at a time when the cost of everything is going up,” Shepherd said in a news release. “To be clear, the accommodation charges only rise when authorized by the government.
“The UCP have consistently left seniors behind, from cutting the Seniors Benefit, imposing new fees for home care, and throwing 60,000 Albertans off the seniors’ drug plan.”
