In case anyone still wants to somehow debate whether the Liberals will deliver affordable housing.
“Housing needs to retain its value,” Mr. Trudeau told The Globe and Mail’s City Space podcast. “It’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future nest egg.”
Actually, w.r.t. to retirement savings it can be valuable as a lot of the better assisted living arrangements will require an upfront payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars for unexpected expenses along with a regular rent expenditure.
This is arguably an awful way to finance elder care and doesn’t justify making housing unaffordable but that stored value is useful if you think you’ll need assisted living.
So in 30 years when I need assisted living but was never able to afford a house, what am I supposed to do? Die in the street?
Our government really should have better programs to assist seniors and there should be non profit, government owned and operated assisted living available. Over 1 million seniors needed to use the new dental benefit so clearly there is an issue with how canada treats their seniors financially.
Yes.
Because by that point, the Boomers will have been soaked for trillions by the LTC industry. The investors will have already be rich and will have moved on to the next victim.
Ah, that’s fair. I didn’t consider assisted living!
Hey, no worries… I’ve been getting deep in the weeds on this one as my mom is in her eighties and trying to decide how to allocate her savings for her EOL.
It really sounds like the issue there is just another subset of housing (un)affordability.
Oh, definitely… and the consolidation of assisted living into fewer and fewer PE firms should scare the shit out of everyone - but it is important to remember that a few people would be screwed if the housing market suddenly collapsed… that said, we absolutely should deflate this market - we just need to consider some fixes for the house-wealthy cash-poor older folks who might be really fucked by this.
Yeah, I do think the assisted living industry would be forced to adjust though. It’s not like the real estate market in general, if the majority of their potential buyers simply don’t have enough money it’s not like they can pivot to other demographics or attract wealthy people from outside the country.
If things aren’t corrected, it won’t be long before a whole generation of new seniors is cash poor with no house to sell.