Michael Brooks: Internet profit is simple: important long-term financial savings for Ontario and improved look after Ontario seniors
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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 Home Tax Credit, recognizing the worth and societal advantages of giving seniors their very own residing decisions.
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Not solely does this proposed tax credit make it simpler for seniors to age in place or transfer into extra appropriate housing, it can additionally assist deal with the housing disaster and save much-needed healthcare {dollars}, whereas guaranteeing that Ontario’s 750,000 seniors can stay comfortably as they age.
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Let’s take a look at how effectively 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-Help 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 dwelling from hospitals when a senior affected person is able to be discharged. Enhanced by politicians of each stripe over time, Quebec’s program has decreased the waitlist for publicly funded LTC beds down to three,700, lower than one sixth of Ontario’s waitlist (adjusted for inhabitants).
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Based mostly on the newest out there knowledge from 2020, implementing a tax credit score program in Ontario just like Quebec’s would initially price the federal government $489 million in foregone tax income. Nonetheless, this could be greater than offset by at the least $288 million in annual financial savings from decreased hospital and LTC admissions, financial savings from delayed healthcare entry, and decrease healthcare demand.
The web profit is simple: important long-term financial savings for Ontario and improved look after Ontario seniors.
Supporting seniors transferring into properties that match their present wants not solely improves their high quality of life but additionally creates constructive outcomes for the broader group. Many seniors stay in properties that not match their wants, usually because of the monetary and logistical boundaries of transferring. The truth is, 29 per cent of senior singles and {couples} in Canada stay in properties with three or extra bedrooms. Whereas choices for downsizing — comparable to senior residences, naturally occurring retirement communities, and licensed retirement properties — do exist, the availability is restricted, and demand is predicted to surge within the coming a long time. Building of latest housing has slowed, pushed by rising labour and materials prices, and excessive native charges, costs and taxes.
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Governments can play a key position 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 embody transferring bills or a share of hire 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 constructive cascading influence on our housing provide by releasing up single household properties, thereby additional assuaging stress on Ontario’s present housing system, whereas additionally presenting alternatives for mild densification by way of the potential conversion of those properties into multiplex housing.
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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 courses, having roughly $1 trillion of property underneath administration.
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