Some jurisdictions have begun to shift away from institutionalizing old people to delivering more home care and personal support services. Quality of life is strongly linked to the ability to remain in your own community and have access to a range of home-based services — everything from nurse visits to meals on wheels and shuttle buses to the local mall. “The social network isn’t just about company,” says Ferguson. “It helps to maintain health.”
Most provinces do offer some, though not enough, funding for these kinds of community services. Seniors’ support networks also tend to emerge organically and unevenly, resulting in a patchwork of local not-for-profit agencies. In small towns and older downtown areas, with their higher concentrations of seniors, such home-based services have been available for years. In the suburbs, however, there are yawning gaps, as well as complicating factors. Raymond Applebaum is the executive director of Peel Senior Link, a non-profit that provides personal support services to about 1,100 seniors living in various Mississauga apartments. Many are very elderly women, and poor: as he notes, 14 percent of the population of this sprawling suburban satellite city lives in poverty. “People just don’t get that.”
And then there’s the cultural angle. Mississauga, like many suburbs, is home to immigrants from dozens of countries; according to Applebaum, ninety languages are represented in this municipality of more than 600,000. Some elderly immigrants live with their children and grandchildren in subdivisions, while others have apartments and families who email instructions from Asia and the Middle East. “We do pretty well on the language side,” he says, “but language isn’t the real issue. It’s being culturally sensitive.”
The great imponderable in all this, Glenn Miller observes, is how the politics of aging will play out in large urban centres. Japan and Britain, both ahead of Canada on the aging curve, are implementing policies to prepare cities for these changes. The Japanese adopted the idea of “universal design,” which emphasizes utility and access for all users, regardless of age (no more cellphones with tiny buttons). The British government appointed “foresight” officials, who have a mandate to urge planners and manufacturers to find ways to address seniors’ needs in everything they do.
These are well-intended endeavours. But the coming debates about our aging cities are likely to be rancorous, and the policy decisions intensely controversial. Property tax breaks for seniors are intended to shield pensioners on fixed incomes from being forced to move because they can’t afford rising taxes. Thirty years from now, however, all that forgone revenue could seriously hinder local councils, precisely when municipalities are facing other age-related fiscal pressures — e.g., fewer work-related transit users paying fares, coupled with rising demand for accessible vehicles and paratransit service. Will local politicians phase out the tax breaks and face the scorn of a large and outspoken constituency, or will they cut services that cater to other age groups?
The driving issue also opens up a veritable Pandora’s box of political conflict. Ferguson feels that all drivers over seventy-five should have to pass a mandatory road test each year. But routine testing will inevitably lead to more confiscated driver’s licences, more anger, resentment, and dependency on the part of those who fail, and additional pressure on families, caregivers, and agencies that provide shuttle services.At the same time, the rapidly growing number of motorized wheelchairs on city sidewalks and streets points toward a whole new dynamic about public space. Are we heading for a time when wheelchair users are compelled to take driving tests or form pressure groups to demand dedicated lanes? Indeed, as more seniors face increasing difficulty getting around urban neighbourhoods, a profound question arises: is mobility an inalienable right?
Many commentators have observed that in coming decades, provincial health budgets will be increasingly stretched between two functions: health care for the old and, to a lesser extent, education for the young. It’s not hard to see how this struggle will make its mark on the shape of our cities. Already, developers in some areas are eyeing decommissioned elementary schools as potential retirement homes and long-term care facilities.
It’s the telling detail: the postwar public school, once bustling with baby boomers, morphs into the last stop. And then what?
