Toronto long-term care home to be replaced by condo with LTC licences set to expire

A long-term care home that has been part of the Forest Hill community for the past 40 years is expected to close early next year to make way for a future condo development.

“Cedarvale Terrace’s operating license will expire in June of 2025, and the new landowner, Stafford Homes, has made an application to the City of Toronto for the rezoning and redevelopment of the property,” writes Michael Shane, executive director of Cedarvale Terrace, in an email to CityNews.

The long-term care facility located on Walmer Road, near Spadina Road and St.Clair Avenue, notified residents and their families of their intent to close their doors in July of this year.

“It was a virtual town hall where the families of the residents could join in and find information about what was going on. But they didn’t really go into detail about anything,” says the family member of a longtime resident. “I feel bad for people that are waiting for long-term care. Now all these people from Cedarvale are all of a sudden putting all these people out. It seems insane to me this is going on”.

Cedarvale Terrace’s executive director said the organization’s priority is to ensure all 145 residents are relocated to a home that is appropriate for their needs and in accordance with their preferences. The home plans to assign a designated representative from the province’s home and community care support services to each resident and their family to assist with the transition.

The Ministry of Long-Term Care confirms that a draft closure plan is currently under review.

“If the closure is approved, Cedarvale will not shut its doors until every resident is safely relocated to a new home that meets their care needs, ”said Jake Roseman, spokesman for Minister of Long-term Care Paul Calandra.

If approved by both the province for the closure and the city for the development, the 6-storey building would be replaced with a 19-storey mixed-use condominium with an expected 87 residential units.

Rendering from redevelopment application submitted to City of Toronto

With many more LTC bed licenses expiring in 2025, Ontario could see more facility owners choosing to close their doors instead of seeking new licenses.

“The problem is that the Ford government is extremely behind in the building of the replacement beds for licenses that are expiring,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, a non-profit organization that focuses on improving the province’s healthcare system through active community and public policy engagement.

Information collected by the coalition indicates there are 78,433 LTC beds in the province, under various types of classifications — many of which will see their licenses expire in the coming years.

“The government, to their credit, did actually do a very successful pilot project in which they built four fast-track long-term care homes on public hospital lands during the pandemic. It only took about a year and a half to get them done and opened,” said Mehra. She emphasizes that building should continue at a higher rate with the availability of municipal land, property and public funds.

“We could pay and build them publicly fast. It has already been done. But instead, we are going through a long and slow process to get companies to bid on the beds and go through the licensing process etc.– all of which was set up to privatize,” she added.

Mehra explained that under former premier Mike Harris, a new model for building long-term care was created, in which public funds were given to for-profit companies to build, own and operate LTC homes. This is the model she said Ontario has been using for the last few decades.

The Ford government has said it plans to expand and redevelop long-term care beds by building 30,000 new and redeveloped long-term care beds over 10 years. Mehra noted that Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office found 40,000 people were on the waitlist for long-term care as of December 2020.

She said: “The problem is that the ending of the current licenses and the opening of the new beds don’t match up, even if they speed up.”