I believe that OREIO should be playing an active role in influencing government policy, and the building code. So what does this look like?

I would like to recognize both Christain Szpilfogel and Tony Miller for playing an active role in influencing government policy. All three of us have sat together at city council committee meetings involving rental housing policy. I've been a repeat guest on CBC and CTV in Ottawa. Tony Miller has been a repeat guest on CTV. I believe the talent exists within OREIO to make an impact. For that reason, I’m proposing a government liaison role within the OREIO executive if I’m elected.

I will give you a personal example in one domain. But there are many areas which need attention.

Today, the “big box” retirement homes and long-term care facilities are institutional and frankly focused on resource management to the detriment of the very people they serve. There’s all kinds of rhetoric about the merits of private versus public. My mother in law died of neglect in a publicly operated long-term care facility in Ottawa, and there was no pandemic, no crisis. The neglect was business as usual. Various politicians are pushing their political agendas. Some want bigger government and want government to take over the entire industry, others want smaller government. Who knows where this will end up?

This past week I had a private meeting with Ontario’s Minister of Long-Term Care. Attending were Minister Merilee Fullerton, two of her staff, and myself with my one of my partners from Dallas. The purpose of the meeting was to understand the challenges that these facilities are facing in Ontario, and to propose some solutions that will make these facilities safer for residents. There are numerous threats that residents face. The current pandemic is only one of them.

This is a function of the design of the buildings, the licensing regime and the allocation of staff.

Patient to Care giver ratios on long term care homes in Ontario are usually 12:1 or 15:1, and as high as 30:1 at night.

The residential care homes that my partners and I operate in the US, have care giver ratios of 5.3:1 during the day and 12:1 or 16:1 at night.

The Center for Disease Control published a study in 2018 showing that residential care homes had a 50% lower incidence of slip and fall injuries than big box facilities. This is a function of both staffing, a smaller setting, and building materials.

Residential care homes are made of softer materials. Wood frame construction is more forgiving than concrete. A fall on a wood framed floor will hurt, but may not cause as much injury as a concrete floor. But fewer falls are happening in the residential care setting too.

The argument that the big box owners make against residential care homes is that the economies of scale can’t be achieved and are too costly to operate. We showed the minister a campus of 8 homes totaling 128 beds that is as cost competitive as any big box facility, while preserving the values and intimacy of a residential care setting.

The other initiative is to make these buildings safer and cost effective. The idea is to reduce the number of rooms that share the same air supply. In our homes, we have a separate HVAC system for each group of four bedrooms. More importantly, the return air for the HVAC system is in the common area. This maintains positive air pressure for the bedrooms which keeps the bad stuff out. The fresh air intake is dedicated for each HVAC system with a HEPA filter in the return path which has been demonstrated in a NASA study in 2017 to be 99.1% effective at filtering out Corona Virus particles. The common area has its own HVAC system. Designing homes with infection control in mind doesn’t have to cost extra. It just requires attention to detail.

The other key in limiting infection in retirement homes is to keep the numbers down. That limits the number of staff entering the building which simply reduces the odds of infection coming in the front door.

Finally, the smaller homes cater better to ethnic diversity. Meal preparation is done locally in each home. It’s not coming from a commercial kitchen and being served cafeteria style on steamer trays. If you want one home to be a kosher house, another one to be Korean, another one Halal, that’s all possible. Food quality and diversity is a problem that the big box facilities have not addressed. I recently saw hot dogs being served at a Revera home, one of Canada’s largest operators.

People will have a long memory when it comes to care facilities. The images of death and neglect in care homes will be indelibly etched in people’s minds for years to come. Families will be thinking twice about whether Mom or Dad would be better off at home, even if their care needs are acute. There are some good operators in Ontario, and some terrible ones.  I believe that the 33,000 obsolete long-term care beds in Ontario which are in desperate need of modernization will require a collaboration between operators and the provincial government who regulate the industry. The current zoning supports what’s needed, but I also believe the zoning code could be tweaked to accommodate these homes and deliver an even better product to the market.

This is just one area that happens to be headline news today. But there are many others, including community housing, hotels, the lack of industrial space in Ottawa, low income housing, the crisis in retail, affordable housing, development charges, tax incentives, short term rentals, rental property standards, the building code, and on and on.

Leadership starts with us.

I hope for your support in the upcoming OREIO election.

Much love.

V.