CSHLD, what?

A term that has become very popular in Quebec since this pandemic started is CSHLD, which is the acronym for centre d'hébergement et de soins de longue durée, or, residential long term health care center.

Spotted throughout the province are these institutional buildings that house hundreds of seniors together in a home to centralize (and therefore lower the cost of) the care for the seniors. They've made the news because many of the residents of these CSHLDs have died due to both the C19 virus and the appalling living conditions at least some of them have suffered.

Back in 2019 I posted this about my idea of having a Retirement-in-Place home with just a handful of seniors. Rereading that blog post I noticed that I didn't actually specify the essence of what my plan was.

Basically my friends and I, we are five people at roughly the same age, move in together into a large enough home that we can each have some private space. I had drawn up a comparison of buying an existing home that we would modify or having one built that is custom to our needs. We would use the house to retire to and to live out our days in.

In any case, I bring this up because on the radio this morning, the host interviewed a woman who is trying to do almost exactly what I've described. There are a couple of differences; she is trying to get the government to move away from the CSHLD model and move to this model instead. She is running up against a solid wall in that direction as the cost efficiencies of grouping a large number of seniors together is hard to beat. It would be a big risk to know if this new proposed model would have benefits or be as cost effective or nearly so.

The second significant difference is that she would not just group together a handful of seniors, but also have a younger family, or students, or some other family of a younger generation also live in the home. With respect to all of the people, the variety of seniors as well as the younger family, a connection would be made so that they have something in common, for example, maybe they would all be interested in various types of volunteering, or in sports and other physical activity, or, interested in political science, or attending the same church (the person on the radio gave the first two as examples, I came up with the other two).

The person on the radio did mention that all of these people would need to be 'trained' so to speak, to get them to understand that living under these new circumstances is not like living in your own house, and nor is it like living in a CSHLD. As it is a new kind of retirement possibility, it would require thinking of ways of ensuring the success of these various people living together.

I am still at least 10 years away from retiring, so I will not have a need for such a retirement home arrangement any time soon; however, that someone other than me is having this idea is a good sign that maybe it will happen in time for when I do retire.