Deachman: Ottawa has a unique opportunity to help seniors age in place

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The area currently includes the RA Centre, the former Revenue Canada data centre, Canada Post, and the Sir Charles Tupper and Sir Leonard Tilley buildings, as well as a great deal of surface parking for those buildings.

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Under the larger plan, most of the land would be sold or leased to developers at market rates. The coalition, led by the Seniors Health Innovation Hub, is asking is asking Canada Lands to lease the 23 acres and former Revenue Canada buildings at low or no cost.

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The parties involved need to make this happen. After all, if the city and feds can’t make room for this kind of housing on hundreds of acres of public land, where exactly can it?

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Carolyn Inch, vice chair of the Seniors Health Innovations Hub, says models like this are essential if people are to remain independent as they age.

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“If we don’t create these kinds of options, people are going to end up in more institutional settings sooner than they need to, and that’s not what most people want,” she says.

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She’s right. Nearly one in five Canadians already is 65 or older. That figure, according to Statistics Canada, is expected to grow to nearly one in four by 2043. Failing to build these options now will almost certainly cost more later — in hospital and long-term care beds, but also in social capital: loneliness and avoidable decline.

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There are other examples of measures that can help. Naturally occurring retirement communities, or NORCs, are buildings or neighbourhoods where many seniors already live and where modest supports, such as transit access, health services and social programming, can help seniors remain independent longer.

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But those supports are by far the exception. According to the Council on Aging, there are 170 such communities in Ottawa. Only three have any formal structure in place.

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Options such as non-profit retirement homes, meanwhile, are exceedingly rare. Ottawa currently has just one: Unitarian House.

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Peggy Edwards, also a member of the Council on Aging of Ottawa’s Age-Friendly Housing Committee, points to other uncomplicated models, including pairing older adults with students in shared housing, in some cases creating small, intergenerational, community-based hubs similar to that being proposed for Confederation Heights.

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She describes the basic principles needed in the seniors housing market as the four As: affordability, accessibility, appropriateness and availability. The last piece — availability — is where the system often breaks down. “That’s a huge issue,” she says.

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We tend to talk about Ottawa’s housing challenges in terms of supply: not enough homes, not enough density, not enough built. That’s all true.

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And while governments focus on funding long-term care beds or new housing construction, neither addresses the space in between, where many seniors now live and would prefer to remain.

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Debbie Staples successfully fought a renoviction in 2024. Had she failed, she says she’d likely be living in her car. Photo by BRUCE DEACHMAN /POSTMEDIA

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For Staples, staying has meant fighting. With the help of ACORN, the tenant advocacy group she joined two years ago, she and her neighbours organized, sought legal advice and went public. The eviction notice was ultimately withdrawn.

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But the uncertainty hasn’t gone away, and her angst remains elevated. The landlord could try again, and Staples, who has no family in town nor a pension following a 25-year career as a cleaner, still faces the grim possibility of one day having to live in her 2008 Chevy Aveo.

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If Ottawa is serious about affordability, dignity and aging well, it needs far more places where people can live between complete independence and institutional care. Otherwise, far more of us will be asking the same question Staples did: Where will the mail be delivered?

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