With the number of Canadians living with dementia expected to more than double by 2050, care professionals say there's a growing need for the development of more suitable long-term care facilities.
A considerable proportion of existing long-term care facilities must be upgraded to meet the needs of this growing cohort, said Tracy Pepe, director of Smelling Pink, an organization specializing in scent-training programs for long-term care.
“There are patients who are in hospitals waiting to get into long-term care homes because there aren’t enough of them,” Pepe told CoStar News. “But long-term care homes need to be retrofitted and brought up to more current situations, and they’re not. There’s an opportunity to take the same tools and produce better results. By designing [them] more effectively, we could reduce annual costs. There are savings to be had by thinking differently.”
Canada has over 2,000 licensed long-term care homes with a total of 198,000 and roughly 224,000 beds, 54% of which are privately managed and 46% publicly owned, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Real estate firms are moving to fill the gap. The Daniels Corp., a builder and developer, for example, has completed over 2,300 units across 16 retirement communities over a 25-year period. But rather than developing standalone facilities, the company integrates them into complexes that offer a continuum of care.
“The reason we really leaned into the notion of building for seniors is we’re always thinking about complete communities wherever it might be that we’re building," Daniels President Jacob Cohen said in an interview. "It’s because we knew there was going to be — not just a need for these homes — a need for high-quality, thoughtfully designed residences that support seniors aging in place, independently and with dignity."
Rising dementia rate
As of 2025, approximately 772,000 Canadians were living with dementia. By 2030, nearly 1 million Canadians will be living with it, and by 2050 that figure will surge to 1.7 million, according to the Alzheimer's Society of Canada. In 2021, the estimated dementia rate among Canadians was 13.9 per 1,000, higher than the approximately 13.4 per 1,000 in the United Kingdom and 12.7 per 1,000 in the United States.
Developers are beginning to ramp up work building homes for seniors with differing levels of healthcare needs.
Luxury retirement residences company Amica Senior Lifestyles partnered with Daniels at Amica Credit Mills in Mississauga, where the Daniels built a 246-unit seniors’ residence in addition to two market-rate condominiums.
Daniels' Cohen described the dedicated memory-care floors at Amica Credit Mills as environments that are equally controlled — all doors and elevators are carefully monitored, for example — and unoppressive because of adequate staffing and oversight protocols.
“It offers a mix of independent assisted-living and memory-care suites, providing diverse care options for seniors who are at different stages and who have different needs, because there’s not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to housing for seniors,” Cohen said. “Somebody in their mid-60s or early 70s may be very independent and not need high levels of care, however, five or 10 years later, that person may transition and need additional care, services, medications, and being able to access all those in one community is a real benefit because it doesn’t upset their lifestyle," Cohen said.
He added "that’s why we’ve been very conscious about creating complete communities that offer all levels of care and service.”
Danny Joseph, president of VIVA Retirement Communities, acknowledged the pronounced dearth of adequate care and retirement homes for Canada's aging population. The developer's latest project, VIVA Leaside, is in its namesake uptown Toronto neighbourhood, where single-family dwellings were mostly built during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the Second World War.
“There’s no question there’s an underlying population demographic shift, and with the Boomers approaching this phase of life, there’s certainly a rise in dementia in society,” Joseph said in an interview with CoStar News. “In many cases, there are a lot of families seeking support, whether it’s in their current home or in a support-living environment such as a retirement community. It’s on the rise, and a lot of developers and operators are looking at ways to respond to the changing needs of their clienteles.”
One of the needs is supportive environments for early-stage dementia, added Joseph, because they offer dignity and mitigate the burden borne by the country’s healthcare system.
Sector chronically undersupplied
The figures are dire, according to an analysis by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis that says the country’s confluent burden of healthcare costs and lost economic productivity totalled $40.1 billion in 2020. It's projected to surge by 275% over the next 24 years.
“I’m hoping that, at some point, the provincial and federal governments find a way to support this segment of the population, because there’s not enough supportive-housing supply out there for seniors with memory-care challenges, and we’re only at the starting point for this growth cycle,” Joseph said.
And that will have ramifications, said Sean McCrorie, Cushman & Wakefield’s vice chair and leader of its Canadian seniors housing and healthcare practice group. McCrorie said all senior housing — not just those with memory care services — are chronically undersupplied and that 200,000 new units need to be built over the next decade to meet demand. He called last year’s 3,500 completions paltry.
The office of Sylvia Jones, the minister of health for the Ontario government, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
McCrorie said the panacea will likely be realized through joint ventures between the public and private sectors and that he’s encouraged by incipient efforts. However, he also noted that the cost of building senior-care facilities has doubled in the past 10 years.
“There’s that capital investment up front, which is very significant, and a big part of that would be development charges from the municipalities,” he said. “But there have been other initiatives by levels of government to reduce some of the red tape and some of the initial cost.”
One such tactic is the Harmonized Sales Tax moratorium on purpose-built rental housing, including seniors' housing where construction was or will be started between Sept. 14, 2023, and Dec. 31, 2030, and is completed by Dec. 31, 2035.
“That’s been helpful,” McCrorie said, “but there are still quite a few government charges in that upfront construction budget, which form part of that barrier to building new supply.”