A Hillcrest Lodge resident is frustrated with the high costs of living at the rent-geared-to-income senior housing building in Orillia.
In recent weeks, resident Linda Goss said she submitted a letter to administration, signed by several residents, regarding concerns with their utility bills and the building’s mandatory food program.
The program provides two meals per day and costs each of the building’s 31 residents $550 per month, coming in on top of Goss’s income-based rent of about $700 per month.
Since she moved into Hillcrest Lodge in December 2022, Goss also said her average hydro bill it about $200 per month, which leaves her with little at the end of the month.
“I’m going for surgery next week. It cost me $200 to buy the thing that I have to put on my arm after my surgery,” said Goss, 74. “If I wouldn’t have gotten the GST (rebate from the government), I wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy that, so it’s not leaving me very much money to spend on things that I need.”
Shortly after she moved into the facility at Cedar and Matchedash streets, the food program’s cost was hiked $135 per month, and she claims the quality of food has decreased over time.
“We’re not getting well-balanced meals. We’re not getting fruits and vegetables,” she said, noting a new cook has been brought on over the past year.
“He’s totally changed our diet around, which we’re not happy about because we’re not getting nutritious meals.”
Some residents are buying and cooking their own food, she added, “which brings up our food costs even more.”
Goss said she would prefer to opt out of the food program but has been told residents cannot do so to ensure the program remains viable.
“They’re saying that if people opt out of the program, there won’t be enough money to pay for the cook and the servers,” she said. “I realize that there’s people that depend on the food program, but there are other places to get meals from.”
She said not all residents need the program.
“Because I can go — I’m very capable of walking and getting around — I would go to the grocery store and buy my own groceries and cook here,” she said.
She also questions the cost of hydro for the small bachelor apartment she lives in.
“This is what we live in — there’s no way,” she said, gesturing at her small space.
Though Goss receives some extra income through the Canada Pension Plan, she said many residents rely on Old Age Security payments and have “maybe $100” left after paying their monthly bills, and still need to pay cellphone bills and for household items like toilet paper, coffee, tea, and more for their apartments.
She said a friend of hers is paying 87 per cent of her income to live there.
These issues prompted Goss to write the letter to the board of directors, but she said she has yet to hear back.
“I wrote a letter to the board of directors and it’s more or less (fallen) on deaf ears,” she said.
Hillcrest Lodge president Michael Jones said he plans to respond to the letter in the near future, stressing the food program’s success requires participation from residents.
“We have fixed costs to provide meals, and any time somebody opts out, it just puts more money on the other people. We’ve calculated if 10 people opted out, we couldn’t afford to run the food program again. That’s how close we are,” he said.
“We don’t make any money on this.”
During Jones’s interview with OrilliaMatters on Friday, the brunch meal included cream of broccoli soup, grilled cheese, and peanut butter cookies, while dinner consisted of barbecue pork loin, rice and vegetables, and crème brûlée.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Jones said, Hillcrest struggled to retain staff. He conceded some staff retained “out of necessity weren’t too good,” but he said there has been a “very positive” shift following ongoing work to restructure management and the organization.
The new cook, for instance, previously ran a restaurant in Orillia, and Jones said he cooks quality food for tenants.
“He’s a very good chef … To say he’s not a good chef is absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
“We monitor these costs and try to keep them as in line as possible. The food cost per head, per day, is about $12. I don’t know, if you even bought the food and cooked it yourself, you could do it for that.”
Last year, Jones told OrilliaMatters the non-profit runs on a tight operating budget without any government assistance, which means rising costs of living “unfortunately have to be passed on” to tenants.
For instance, he said, the cost of property insurance shot up 300 per cent in 2023 to $36,000. Administration managed to get that figure down to $26,000, which was still more than double the previous rate.
The costs for hydro, as well, are “out of our control,” Jones said.
He said he sympathizes with residents about the high cost of living and noted increases to pensions and Old Age Security have not kept pace.
“That is a problem. Until they increase the Canada Pension (Plan) and the (Old Age Security), there’s nothing we can do about that,” he said. “We’ve been lobbying for it to be increased because we know they haven’t that much left at the end of the month after the expenses here. Before, they did; they had quite a bit, but not anymore.”
Looming in the background, as well, are Hillcrest Lodge’s efforts to regain tax-exempt status.
The City of Orillia has never collected property taxes for the building, following a 10-year agreement that began in 2009.
The property owner, the Toronto United Church Council, signed a 50-year lease with Hillcrest Lodge in 2005 for $1 annually, and the project received a lump-sum grant from the federal government, along with monthly mortgage subsidies from the provincial government, which allowed the organization to remain otherwise self-sufficient over the years.
With that support, Hillcrest Lodge has been able to entirely cover its operating costs since opening.
However, in 2019, the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation deemed Hillcrest Lodge ineligible for tax-exempt status because it does not own the property.
Last March, city council approved $266,000 in tax relief to the organization, which has been working on an agreement to acquire the property from the owner and regain tax-exempt status.
At the time, Jones said the loss of the tax-exempt status threatened to bankrupt the organization and raise rent far beyond the point of attainability for residents.
“We’re in the final stages of the transfer agreement just now,” Jones said.
