Rest home residents on notice
Residents of a Merivale rest home have only weeks to find new housing because the owners expected fewer would still be alive to fill a new facility on the site.
Nancy Uttley is in her 90s and sometimes struggles to breathe. She lives in a rest home at the Merivale Retirement Village in Christchurch, but last week was given about six weeks to find a new place.
She said the news was ‘‘the last straw’’.
‘‘I think it is dreadful.’’
‘‘I am not very well at all, even without this happening. I am being taken out tomorrow to look for somewhere else to live. I am an old, old lady. I am in my 90s and not well. I never dreamed this would happen.’’
Uttley is one of many residents in the village who may have to move. A new care facility in the village will open on April 1 and the existing earthquake-damaged rest home will be demolished. Unfortunately for residents, the new facility will have fewer beds than the existing rest home, meaning some have to leave.
Residents have been offered the option of paying $150,000 for an occupation right agreement for a room in the new facility or paying $30 a day on top of their usual charge. A letter to residents
said the new beds would be allotted on a ‘‘first come-first served basis’’.
Village director Simon Marks said work started on the new facility three years ago and they had to estimate how many residents would still need care once it was completed. But not as many residents died over that three years as the owners had predicted, he said.
‘‘The idea was to consolidate and reduce the number [of beds] overall.’’
‘‘We thought the numbers [of residents] would be down enough for a smooth transition.’’
‘‘That hasn’t happened as we thought it might. We have more numbers than we thought we might have.’’
He said residents were given only six weeks notice because ‘‘we were trying to see what numbers we were likely to have and there is no sense in alarming people’’.
The site of the demolished rest home would be developed for
retirement villas, apartments or townhouses but the move was not motivated by money.
‘‘It is not a financially driven thing. We decided it was better to have a new facility.’’
Marks said that residents would probably have to move out of the rest home by April 1, but some flexibility was possible.
Rest home resident Margaret Halford, 88, said the move was ‘‘terrible’’. She could not afford the $150,000 charge or the $30 a day.
‘‘Who can afford that? We don’t know what we are going to do. We have to be out and it doesn’t give us much time. It is a mess. I think they should place us somewhere rather than us look for somewhere.’’
One resident, who did not want to be named, said it was hard to find a new place as she was in her 80s and had health issues.
‘‘It is frightful. I can’t sleep, I
thought this was it for the rest of my life and I was quite happy here. I can’t sleep and I can’t concentrate on anything. It’s ghastly. It wrecks your whole life.’’
Jim McCarron,76, said he felt badly let down.
He joked he might go to jail because at least ‘‘that would give me three square meals and a bed’’.
He didn’t know where he would end up after his 10 years at the village and many of his fellow residents felt the same way.
The letter to residents said people who do not want to move to the new facility would need to talk to retirement village staff.
‘‘We need to discuss how we can help you transition to accommodation elsewhere,’’ the letter said.
‘‘We appreciate how difficult this will be for you. However, we are doing our best to resolve a problem of having too few beds in the new facility.’’