In late 2025 the BC Care Providers Assocation in partnership with the Westbridge Group published some very shocking results from a comprehensive survey undertaken earlier that year. The survey focused on the Independent Living (IL) sector, meaning seniors housing projects that provide hospitality services such as meals, housekeeping, socialization activities and related services.
Our national housing agency, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, used to publish a similar survey. They did that every year for 23 years until in 2021 they decided, in a masterpiece of bad timing, that no one was interested in seniors housing and so they killed the survey.
That’s not entirely true. They did in fact kill the survey but they did not say, in public at least, that no one was intersted in seniors housing. What they did say was that they thought it was more important to focus their limited resources on housing affordability and so they killed the survey.
In the United States, the National Investment Center (US spelling) for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC) is a highly esteemed organization that provides a plethora of extremely useful information and research designed to help everyone involved in the industry better understand it.
What a concept.
But I digress. The last pre-Covid CMHC survey was published in June 2020, based on data compiled in 2019. To take one example, the vacancy rate at that time in Victoria/Esquimalt/Oak Bay/View Royal was 2.1%. The BCCPA Westbridge Group survey pegged the vacancy rate in 2025 at 23.9%. The vacancy rate for Metro Victoria and Gulf Islands went from 3.2% in 2020 to 15.9% in 2025.
And all the while, the number of older people in these areas was increasing.
We have explored many different theories to explain this phenomenon which we will highlight in subsequent posts. One of the most persuasive is the state of housing markets in most areas of Canada. If you cannot sell your house you might be more inclined to stay put, particularly if you have learned some tricks from the Covid era such as getting practically anything you can imagine delivered to your front door.