What now for old age homes?

AFTER receiving numerous complaints from the elderly living in the old age homes in the South, the COURIER decided to visit the homes and talk to the elderly who felt as if they had been forgotten.

A common complaint was that their homes were not being maintained but they would be called if they missed just one rental payment.

The COURIER visited retirement villages in Moffatview, Glenesk, Northern Place, Kariena Place, Bellavista, Crown Gardens and Reuven, and learnt that the elderly had been reporting faults to their management offices but still they would wait for months and months before things were repaired. And in some cases, the elderly said they waited for years.

Over the last couple of years, the elderly have developed a habit of simply hiring people to repair things, cut their grass and paint their units because they were convinced that reporting faults did not help. They said that very often contractors would come to take a quotation but that would be the last they saw of them. But as the COURIER investigated, it learnt there was a long process that had to take place before the go-ahead could be granted.

Contractors need a go-ahead before they start fixing something or they will not get paid for the job unless it is one of those few things labelled urgent. On top of that, the contractor’s’ quotations need to be audited to ascertain that they were not over-billing the city. Still, the problems went beyond this reason and led some seniors to questions if the funds, allocated to the old age homes, were still available or not because they were not seeing repairs being done in an impressive way.

At almost all the visits to the homes, the frustrations of the elderly were evident. Some said they tried to get the attention of national newspapers and radio stations but they were not interested in hearing them. That’s presumably because the elderly often complain from an individual experience and it’s not clear that an issue affects many of them.

Upon visiting the old age homes and speaking to one elderly person after another, it became clear that this was not just a problem facing one or two senior citizens. Therefore visiting the elderly unit by unit would not really help all of them get the services delivered.

In many cases, it became clear the frustrations were leading some of the elderly people to argue with management.

After giving all parties a chance to speak, the COURIER learnt that the management offices always report things that needed to be repaired. But because the repairs were not done, the elderly had started to distrust management. However, most of the elderly said they knew that management was reporting problems but they were unsure as to why there were such backlogs.

Although people in management offices feared speaking to the media because they were not allowed to, eventually some showed the COURIER records and paperwork which showed that they were indeed reporting all problems. Why things were not getting repaired within set out parameters was beyond their understanding.

Some of the elderly were angry and alleged that they are phoned immediately when they missed rent payments but in the meantime, they had a number of things in their units that needed to be repaired.

This then prompted the COURIER to once again try to communicate with the Housing Department which lodged an investigation and found no evidence to support allegations that their finance officers were harassing the elderly for missing payments.

Housing Department statement

The City’s Housing Department agrees that there is a maintenance backlog not only at the mentioned old age homes but also on other housing stock managed by the department in the region. In an effort to deal with this challenge, the City has since finalised the panel of contractors for maintenance.

The newly appointed panel will assist the department to be effective and efficient on maintenance of the housing stock. The region has a detailed maintenance plan in place which prioritises old age homes.

Our investigations confirmed that there is no concrete evidence to support allegations that the City’s finance officials harass the tenants for missing payment of their monthly rental instalments. The Department can, however, confirm that it used to utilise the services of independent debt collectors, which contract had since been terminated more than two years ago.

The City urges all senior citizens to continue to meet their monthly rental obligation to enable the City to consistently offer first-class service in all retirement villages.

DA’s promises of solution

After allowing the DA to settle in at the helm, PR Clr Tyrell Meyers, who has always been vocal and hands on in criticising the previous government for allegedly failing to satisfy the service needs of the elderly in these homes, communicated with the COURIER and had a letter written to be handed over to whoever would be appointed as the chairperson of housing as soon as he or she was appointed. As soon as the letter was handed over the newly appointed chairperson knew and acknowledged that there would be a lot of work to do and the old age homes would all be visited and assessed, and not just the ones in the South but all of them.

Chairperson Suzan Clarke had a conversation with the COURIER on Friday, September 22, as her office was getting ready to start performing its mandate. “I am going to be working hard and looking at all the previous projects to see what was done. These homes will get best and better service because the mayor said we must make sure that everything we do is for the betterment of the people and not ourselves,” she said.

The COURIER will be visiting the homes with the chairperson, who was appointed less than two weeks ago, and will update the elderly of the new plans to get things in order.

Clr Tyrell Meyer added that “the basics are key and they range from spotting out leaking geysers, pipes and overgrown grass. Seniors cannot live like this. What I like about this news government is that the chairperson has acknowledged receipt of my letter and is prepared to something about it.”

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