Like many St. Albert seniors, low-income or otherwise, Ria and Henry Harks don’t want to move out of the city. They don’t even want to move out of their Mission home, but know it’s inevitable.
“It’s getting to the point we can’t handle living in the home, with the grass cutting and the snow shoveling,” Ria said, noting her reduced mobility and Henry’s vision impairment.
They were pleased with this week’s news that the province would honour the previous government’s commitment to spend $7.9 million on 42 new seniors affordable housing spaces in the city.
Knowing that there might be more options for them as they look to move into seniors housing within the next year is reassuring news in a community like St. Albert with its significant aging population.
“If you look in the Grandin area and all the older parts of St. Albert, what do you see mostly? You don’t see little kids running around any more,” Henry said. “It’s becoming a seniors community rather than a young-person community.”
They would prefer to live in their own home, but if they do have to move out, they certainly don’t want to move out of St. Albert because it has all the amenities they’re looking for.
Mitch Tremblay said while he feels he’s still a decade or more away from having to make a decision about his own future housing, he’s not too concerned about whether he can afford it because he has done well for himself.
Nonetheless, he said he’s happy with the government’s commitment to ensure low-income seniors have options to stay in the city.
“It shouldn’t matter if you worked as a cook or a lawyer,” he said. “Nobody wants to move away from home in the last years of their life.”
Seniors Minister Sarah Hoffman confirmed the funding this week in a letter to the city and to the Sturgeon Foundation, the local seniors housing foundation that oversees seniors affordable housing spaces in the city and surrounding communities.
Coun. Wes Brodhead, who represents St. Albert on the foundation board, said this is great news for the city.
“St. Albert has a significant amount of market-rate seniors housing, but for the affordable element, it’s a little harder to come by, and that’s what Sturgeon Foundation serves,” he said.
The funding will be used to build Phase 2 of North Ridge Place, which will include 42 new units on land the foundation already owns, adjacent to the existing Phase 1.
Brodhead said the need for this space is apparent, with prospective residents waiting as long as three years to get into the facility.
Foundation director Dennis Magnusson said the waiting lists for North Ridge Lodge, North Ridge Place and Chateau Mission Court collectively have more than 90 names on them, so there’s no doubt the spaces will fill up once construction is completed.
“It’s something that’s been needed for a long time, and we’re very happy that it’s going ahead,” he said.
He said the process to get architects to bid on the design element of the building – overseen by the province rather than the foundation – is underway and should be awarded by the end of October. The tender to build the design will likely go out in the spring, with construction beginning in summer 2016. Construction is expected to be finished by the end of 2017.
