Local seniors appear concerned about insufficient housing options and accessible taxi services, a recent survey has found.
That dissatisfaction may grow as Age-Friendly Thunder Bay predicts residents aged 60 and older will make up a third of municipality’s population in 20 years.
For this reason, Age-Friendly Thunder Bay has created a community-wide action plan to help address the needs and interests of senior citizens.
“We know that housing is an issue,” Age-Friendly Thunder Bay committee chairwomen Rebecca Johnson said.
“Seniors want to downsize, so how do we accommodate them in a smaller home when we know we don’t have enough of those available in the community.”
Over the course of two months, residents of all ages were asked to complete a survey and participate in focus groups to highlight thoughts, opinions and ideas about aging in Thunder Bay.
That survey revealed senior citizens are disappointed with wait times for both senior housing and supportive housing.
The seniors who participated in the survey also said there’s a shortage in housing options and those options aren’t nearby many amenities, which then raised concerns about transportation.
Residents were dissatisfied with accessibility and affordability when it comes to transportation.
As you age you can’t drive so how do you manage to get around the community. We need to seriously look into that immediately,” Johnson said.
“There are areas that we need to improve on, we are a growing senior demographic so what are the issues and that’s what we are trying to work on.”
An Age-Friendly Senior summit held Wednesday at the Oliver Road Community Centre aimed to continue the discussion that the survey started. The committee invited the community to discuss improvements towards building a more age-friendly Thunder Bay.
“We’ve been working on this for about seven years now and I think we are at the point of being able to say that we are age friendly,” Johnson said.
“We have been designated that by the World Health Organization, it’s in our city’s strategic plan, it’s also in a number of other strategic plans of other organizations so to me we are well on our way to being age friendly.”
Despite the above mentioned dissatisfaction, overall the survey did report that seniors are relatively pleased with city services.
