Michael Ennamorato
Special to The Lake Report

The results of a detailed survey about the housing needs of Niagara-on-the-Lake seniors as they age provides a number of insights on some of the hard decisions they will have to make as their needs evolve.

As noted in The Lake Report’s previous coverage, “NOTL seniors don’t ever want to leave, survey finds,” seniors have been very clear about their core needs when it comes to future housing.

For the majority, it all boils down to three key elements: the opportunity to stay in their current NOTL community, retaining as much independence as possible and having ready access to health care and other life supports when needed.

This sounds like a reasonable set of expectations, but many seniors feel that achieving all three will be impossible. 

Almost half (45 per cent) believe the type of future assistance they’ll need won’t be available in NOTL and an equally large proportion believe they will have to move from NOTL to obtain the housing and support services they will need as they age.

Given what we know about the existing housing stock and support infrastructure in NOTL, it can be argued that these concerns are not unfounded.  

Sounds like a real conundrum.

But how difficult will the necessary trade-offs really be? We know that fully half of NOTL seniors give “remaining in town” the highest possible rating for importance (10 on a 0-to-10 scale). 

And more than three-quarters assign it a very high score of at least 8 on this scale.

At the same time, though, when asked to choose the single most important housing requirement, seniors are far more likely to point to “easy access to health care” and to “a single residence with access to a range of services” than to give “staying in NOTL” paramount importance.

This does not at all diminish the critical role that retaining local community ties plays in maintaining high quality of life. 

What it does mean, though, is that the benefits of community and the dignity of independence cannot be sustained or enjoyed if the necessary range of health care and other supports are not readily available.

Because you can’t achieve the former without the latter.

So, if forced to make a choice, as many seniors anticipate, the outcome will be problematic, will entail some pain and very likely will result in reduced quality of life.

To demonstrate this, let’s return to all of those seniors who give the highest possible importance rating score to “staying in NOTL.”

More than one in four of these individuals say they would leave NOTL rather than accept less than their ideal housing and support arrangements.

And this is despite the fact they consider local community ties to be critical underpinnings of their happiness.

How about the remainder? Some don’t know what they would do, but most would accept reduced health and other life supports to stay in NOTL.

This, of course, would lead to another form of unhappiness and considerable risk should the gap between needed and available support services become substantial.

How large are the gaps in housing infrastructure and support services when it comes to the future needs of our growing seniors population?

Given the critical importance of the issue, it seems that finding the answer should be high on the priority list of our local policymakers. 

Researchers Michael Ennamorato and Stephen Ferley oversaw the comprehensive survey of NOTL seniors housing needs.