Michael Brooks: Web profit is plain: vital long-term financial savings for Ontario and improved take care of Ontario seniors
Evaluations and suggestions are unbiased and merchandise are independently chosen. Postmedia could earn an affiliate fee from purchases made by hyperlinks on this web page.
Article content material
In Ontario, a coalition of actual property, well being and senior care associations are advocating for the enhancement of the province’s Seniors’ Care at Dwelling Tax Credit score, recognizing the worth and societal advantages of giving seniors their very own dwelling selections.
Article content material
Article content material
Not solely does this proposed tax credit score make it simpler for seniors to age in place or transfer into extra appropriate housing, it can additionally assist handle the housing disaster and save much-needed healthcare {dollars}, whereas making certain that Ontario’s 750,000 seniors can reside comfortably as they age.
Commercial 2
Article content material
Let’s have a look at how properly this has labored in our neighbouring province, Quebec.
Since its introduction greater than 20 years in the past, Quebec’s Tax Credit score for Dwelling-Assist Providers for Seniors has confirmed extremely efficient in serving to seniors stay of their communities, easing the pressure on long-term care (LTC) beds, lowering hospital admissions, and expediting the return residence from hospitals when a senior affected person is able to be discharged. Enhanced by politicians of each stripe through the years, Quebec’s program has lowered the waitlist for publicly funded LTC beds down to three,700, lower than one sixth of Ontario’s waitlist (adjusted for inhabitants).
Article content material
High Tales
Article content material
Commercial 3
Article content material
Based mostly on the latest accessible knowledge from 2020, implementing a tax credit score program in Ontario just like Quebec’s would initially value the federal government $489 million in foregone tax income. Nevertheless, this is able to be greater than offset by at the very least $288 million in annual financial savings from lowered hospital and LTC admissions, financial savings from delayed healthcare entry, and decrease healthcare demand.
The web profit is plain: vital long-term financial savings for Ontario and improved take care of Ontario seniors.
Supporting seniors shifting into properties that match their present wants not solely improves their high quality of life but additionally creates optimistic outcomes for the broader group. Many seniors stay in properties that not match their wants, typically because of the monetary and logistical boundaries of shifting. Actually, 29 per cent of senior singles and {couples} in Canada reside in properties with three or extra bedrooms. Whereas choices for downsizing — comparable to senior flats, naturally occurring retirement communities, and licensed retirement properties — do exist, the availability is proscribed, and demand is predicted to surge within the coming a long time. Development of latest housing has slowed, pushed by rising labour and materials prices, and excessive native charges, prices and taxes.
Commercial 4
Article content material
Governments can play a key function in making downsizing extra financially viable by providing focused incentives comparable to a tax credit score, which make it simpler for seniors to maneuver with out being burdened by prices. Prices might embrace shifting bills or a proportion of lease in purpose-built seniors’ housing.
This may additionally encourage the personal sector to construct extra purpose-built seniors’ housing for these seniors wishing to downsize. This, in flip, would have a optimistic cascading influence on our housing provide by releasing up single household properties, thereby additional assuaging strain on Ontario’s present housing system, whereas additionally presenting alternatives for mild densification by the potential conversion of those properties into multiplex housing.
Beneficial from Editorial
Michael Brooks is the CEO of Realpac (Actual Property Affiliation of Canada), a 54-year-old nationwide affiliation of institutional actual property house owners of all asset lessons, having roughly $1 trillion of belongings beneath administration.
Bookmark our web site and assist our journalism: Don’t miss the enterprise information you could know — add financialpost.com to your bookmarks and join our newsletters right here.
Article content material
