Seniors’ Housing Symposium

On November 19, 2013 SHIP held a Seniors’ Symposium at the Travelodge in Saskatoon. There was a good turn out  with a total of 75 people showed up including the speakers. A wide range of people from different organizations and businesses showed up for the event. 

 The day started off with breakfast and opening remarks from the Saskatoon Council on Aging (SCOA). Elliot Paus-Jenssen, President of SCOA, and Cheryl Loadman, the Age-friendly Saskatoon Initiative Coordinator for SCOA spoke about the challenges that communities will face as their demographic shifts and becomes more populated with seniors. They also talked about how to address these challenges.

The symposium then moved into workshops and participants could choose from two conference streams. One stream was the project development stream and the morning workshop for that was called Developing a Housing Project. The other stream was the design and management stream which had a morning workshop called Municipal/Community Planning for Seniors’ Housing.

After the first round of workshops everyone met back in the main dining area for the National Housing Day Luncheon. Following a lunch, there was a brief program with a keynote address from Wolf Willow Co-Housing. They spoke about their experience developing and managing the co-housing development.

The afternoon was then taken up with two more workshops and again participants could choose from either stream. The two workshops in the project development stream were:

  • Housing Tenures
  • Financing Models for Housing Projects
  • The two workshop options in the design and management stream included:
  • Design and Innovation for Seniors’ Housing
  • Best Practices in Managing and Marketing Seniors’ Housing

Each workshop was well attended. The individual workshops had 2-3 speakers from various businesses or organizations. We had speakers from CMHC, Prairie Wild Consulting, SCOA, the Saskatchewan Co-operative Association, the City of Saskatoon, AODBT Architecture, System Built Developments, Preferred Choice, Affinity Credit Union, Saskatoon Mennonite Care Services, Preston Park, and Luther Care Communities.

For more information contact SHIP at (306) 979-6707 or development@shipweb.ca.

A schedule of the event is available here.