(rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

open about one year now

Red Deer’s Crimson Villas a prototype for future seniors lodges with huge need for units across Alberta

Apr 22, 2022 | 3:43 PM

Things are running smoothly at the recently opened Crimson Villas seniors lodge in Red Deer’s Bower neighbourhood (4736-30 Street).

The 90-suite building opened less than a year ago, but couldn’t host a grand opening due to the pandemic. On Thursday, it welcomed Seniors and Housing Minister Josephine Pon, as well as Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan, and Bridges Community Living board members for a tour.

Pon says the province’s 10-year affordable housing strategy plan, presented last fall, targets 25,000 new affordable housing units in the short-term, and 82,000 over a decade for low-income Albertans.

The minister says that will take new partnerships to secure funding and attract outside capital for such projects.

“It’s important that seniors live happily, particularly because during the pandemic, it was very hard for them. It’s so good that I can come back, visit this place and see the smiling faces,” Pon remarked.

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“There are lots of proposals and lots of requests from everywhere for seniors lodges and affordable housing. When we see a proposal, we look at why do they need it in that area, and how do we set it up to be a priority. With this new lodge in Red Deer, the old one was outdated. That’s why they needed it and that’s why we funded it.”

(rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

The 65-unit Piper Creek Lodge, which Crimson Villas replaced, was built in the 1960s. Bridges has seven facilities in Red Deer, with only two of them built this century.

Crimson Villas cost just over $28 million to build, and includes a salon, gym and community garden for residents, each of whom are 55+.

Geoff Olson, Bridges’ executive director, says they have approximately 650 units in the city now, but there’ll be a need for about 800 more by the end of the decade — and that’s just for seniors, he says. Those numbers are according to a needs assessment done by Bridges in 2018.

“This building was important in that it addressed the need of replacing Piper Creek, where we had some 150 square foot suites, compared to 600 square feet now. It’s a huge increase in quality. At the old building, you couldn’t get your walker through the door,” says Olson. “We also see this building as a prototype for future lodges, with its walk-in showers, larger doorways and wider hallways.”

Olson says the problem isn’t necessarily that a lot of seniors are homeless, but rather so many are at a disadvantage because they’re paying a signficant amount — often 50 per cent — of their income towards rent.

“That doesn’t leave a lot of room to pay for day-to-day things,” he says.

Bridges’ next oldest building is Pines Lodge on the city’s north end. Built in the mid-70s, it’s the next to be replaced, with its 300 square foot suites which Olson says weren’t designed for a large number of people with things like walkers.

“It’s on our list to get replaced within 10 years,” he says. “We’re currently working on a proposal for the Piper Creek site, where we’d like to put an apartment building. We’ll be hopefully submitting that this summer.”