A city-led committee is reviving efforts to bring more seniors’ housing to Flin Flon.
Coun. Colleen McKee, a member of the committee, delivered a presentation last week to outline the group’s preliminary conversations.
“We’ve come to a place where it’s time to have some serious discussions on how we’re going to move forward with the seniors in our community,” McKee said at council’s Tuesday, Sept. 5 meeting.
“It would all be driven by the type of care that the community would need.”
To move forward, McKee said an assessment is needed to determine the type of seniors’ housing the community requires.
“When it comes to different levels of care, I mean you have seniors in the community that have
mobility issues but still have their full mind,” she said.
“You have seniors that have varying levels of dementia, mental issues where they need care at different levels. And as they get older and their care increases, do we have the capacity for that? So it’s looking at the community from a holistic view.”
McKee favours a town-hall-style meeting that would invite residents to share their thoughts on housing needs.
She said the committee has also discussed the possibility of hiring someone to go door-to-door to conduct a housing survey. Paper-based surveys are also possible.
McKee and the committee have discussed possibilities such as building retrofits and new buildings, including semi-detached units in individual neighbourhoods.
She said a previous city-sponsored survey found a need for seniors’ housing that allows couples to live together.
“Lots of times when people require [housing], they end up going into an institution where just the husband can get in, or just the wife, so they’re…apart,” said McKee.
McKee said she knows an individual interested in potentially building seniors’ housing in Flin Flon, but she’s unsure of what guidance to offer regarding the type of need in the community.
Of course no new housing will happen without funding. In that regard, the committee has discussed possibilities such as government support, private investment and “personal investors” who would put their own money into a housing project while also living in the facility.
McKee said “maybe” Flin Flon will “get a pie-in-the sky millions of dollars to build a great big unit,” but her guess is this will
not happen.
Another idea pondered by the committee revolves around a business that would maintain private residences – shoveling snow, mowing lawns and the like – to enable seniors to live at home longer.
McKee emphasized the preliminary nature of the committee’s discussions.
Mayor Cal Huntley said the city is supporting the committee’s work, but the nature of that support has not been formalized.
Determining the nature of the city’s support will indicate the next steps in the process, he added.
Flin Flon has seen three potential seniors’ housing projects fall by the wayside over the past five years.
In 2012, construction company Bridge Road Developments was turned down for a provincial grant that would have helped build a 36-unit complex for seniors on fixed incomes.
Had Bridge Road received the grant, the company was prepared to also potentially build a separate 24-unit housing complex for wealthier seniors.
In 2014, the province rejected another grant application to convert the former Flin Flon Hotel into a 21-unit seniors’ housing complex, then-mayor George Fontaine said at the time.
The then-NDP government announced in 2015 it would build a 20-unit seniors’ complex on Hemlock Drive, but the PC government now appears non-committal and notes the project is “under review.”
According to the latest census, 31 per cent of Flin Flon residents – 1,605 people – were 55 or older as of 2016. That was slightly higher than the 29 per cent of all Manitobans who were in that age range.
