Stratford city council held a special meeting Tuesday, July 23, to authorize the sale of a parcel of land that will eventually be converted into a long-term care facility for seniors.
Located at 3188 Vivian Lane, the sale and conveyance of the land to Stratford Long Term Care LP was passed by a 9-1 vote with Councillor Geza Wordofa the lone dissenting vote. The final sale price and other details of the sale will be made public at a future council meeting.
The deal had mixed reviews among those in attendance and to some presenting their thoughts to council prior to the vote. Paul Brown, a long-time professional in the health care sector which includes a stint as the executive vice president of the Canadian Hospital Association, delivered an impassioned message to council to not sell the land off to a company that would privatize the future facility.
“In my calculations, a 25-year mortgage on a private facility will wind up costing the taxpayers over $470 million, and that’s without any public ownership at the end of the term,” he said. “This is a real estate play and has nothing to do with health care. It’s a mis-aligned vehicle to get taxpayers to fund the development costs.”
Coun. Mark Hunter said Brown raised a number of valid concerns in his presentation, saying he correctly stated that subsidized long-term care facilities are expensive for taxpayers and that those subsidies are typically provincial tax dollars but could contain a federal component through health funding transfers to the province.
“The challenge we face in the city is that we have zero control over those decisions to subsidize long-term care facilities as opposed to subsidizing home care - a cheaper option and the one preferred by Mr. Brown and many other people,” he said. “While many prefer home care, it is not a viable solution for everyone. We still have a need for care facilities and long waiting lists to get into them. That need was the primary motivation for our decision.”
If this particular parcel of land sounds familiar, it should - the city had mentioned it as a potential, if not ideal, site to build an attainable housing project on. The site was first mentioned publicly for this use in 2021 when Joani Gerber commented on it and 150 McCarthy Road as two sites designated for pilot projects. It was then identified in 2023 as a ‘prime candidate’ by project partners, and city staff was to provide information to council for consideration on this proposal.
Hunter agreed that the city is in need of more housing - affordable, attainable and long-term care housing make the short list - but he said the catalyst in this decision came when Stratford Long Term Care LP offered to buy 3188 Vivian Lane for their facility.
“We had no active, viable plan for the construction of attainable housing and this proposal addressed one type of housing need - the one for long-term care units,” he said. “The city did not have enough money to build housing on the Vivian lands, so we were going to need some type of public/private partnership to build housing there. By selling the land, we get cash that we can use to address other community needs, and with the approval of council, this could include more affordable or attainable housing.”
Even in the face of the current need for care solutions, Brown doesn’t see this decision as a good one by the city.
“We’re going to find that out when we have thousands of beds in approximately 10 years but it may be five, when you have more people wanting to stay in their homes and live independently with assisted living support but their taxes will already be committed to a liability,” he said of the for-profit, private facility. “Right now, we think this is the solution but with the advances in technology and medicine will make those beds a liability. It will be a sunk cost and we won’t have the money to put into home care.”
One person in favour of the sale was Bob Verdun, who called the move to help provide long-term care solutions a step in the right direction.
“There was a 25 year period where there were no new long-term care homes created, and the city needs to concentrate on the continuum of care,” he said. “It’s the city’s role to facilitate something that’s overdue.”
