ABSTRACT
This paper explores the links between housing, financialization, and inequality—as exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses specifically on seniors’ housing (retirement and long-term care homes) and purpose-built rental housing, exploring how government cuts and retrenchment in the late 1990s created an opportunity for private profits for financial investors in housing that catalyzed a dramatic rise in “financialized” ownership of care homes, retirement properties, and multifamily rental housing in the province. Financial business strategies then generated a series of crises exacerbated by COVID-19. In rental housing, a crisis of affordability has led to displacement pressures and a COVID-related flood of evictions. In seniors’ housing, a crisis of care has been exposed by disproportionate deaths in long-term care and retirement homes nationwide. In Ontario, COVID-19 death rates were highest in financialized and corporate-owned for-profit homes, pointing to the downsides of prioritizing investor profits over housing, good jobs, and high-quality care. This paper is part of the SPE Theme on the Political Economy of COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
For-profit ownership of long-term care (LTC) homes for the elderly is linked to worse outcomes for residents. In Canada, there has been an increase in financialized ownership in which seniors' housing (LTC homes and retirement residences) is run as products for investors. The top 10 firms have doubled their holdings from 2003 to 2020, and currently 33% of seniors' housing (including 22% of LTCs and 42% of retirement homes) is owned by private equity, institutions or other financial firms. The business strategies of these firms drive profits not only from real estate but also from domestic and care operations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for-profit and financialized operators in Ontario have stood out for having higher death rates in their LTC homes. A radical remaking of the sector is necessary to take the profit out of care.