Ontario long-term care homes seek more money for home care and supportive housing

TORONTO — The fastest way to get into a long-term care home in Ontario is by going to the hospital first, advocates say.

The situation is particularly acute in Toronto, where the combination of an increasing and aging population and the loss of nearly 700 beds due to nursing home closures has meant that many nursing homes are taking in new residents exclusively from hospitals.

That has led one of two major long-term care associations in Ontario to take the unusual step of calling out the province to boost funding to other sectors ahead of the spring budget.

Ontario needs a new approach to deal with an aging population, said Lisa Levin, CEO of AdvantAge Ontario, which represents the vast majority of municipal and non-profit nursing homes in Ontario.

“We can’t have people only get into long-term care if they’re in crisis,” Levin said. “We can’t keep having people go to hospitals because they can’t get into long-term care any other way. We need to have more options.”

She points to data collected by the Canadian Institute of Health Information that shows more than 50 per cent of long-term care admissions are people coming from a hospital, a 67 per cent jump from pre-pandemic levels.

AdvantAge is calling on the province to dramatically expand supports for seniors, including capital funding to greatly expand seniors’ supportive housing, plus a further $600 million to go into home care.

“A lot of people just need a little bit extra care and support to be able to continue living independently in the community,” she said.

Levin said seniors’ supportive housing would be similar to retirement homes, which can be expensive and not a realistic option for many, but with rent geared to income.

The organization, which represents hundreds of long-term care homes across Ontario, also wants to see more money spent on those homes as the makeup of their population has shifted in recent years. Two in five long-term care residents now live with a psychiatric or mood disorder, Levin said.

“We need to get more resources in long-term care so that we can work with these individuals and provide them the proper care and assistance, and we also need more options in the community so that they don’t have to go into long-term care in the first place,” Levin said.

Levin hears stories daily from families across the province about the struggle to get a loved one into a long-term care home.

“It’s almost impossible to get in from the community,” she said.

The situation is acute at one nursing home in downtown Toronto, where about 90 per cent of residents come directly from a hospital.

Nearly 100 per cent of the admissions at Belmont House come from patients considered to be in a crisis category, which puts them in the highest position on a wait-list to get into a nursing home, said the home’s CEO, Maria Elias.

That means there are three types of people who are now getting in: those in hospital who cannot receive proper care at home, a resident at a nursing home that is closing and someone who is in crisis in the community and cannot get enough care at home or in a retirement residence.

But very few are coming from that last category into Belmont House, Elias said. In addition to the 90 per cent who come from a hospital, the vast majority of the remainder are coming because of long-term care home closures.

Nearly 700 long-term care beds have been lost in Toronto due those closures over the last several years. The province outlawed new admissions in three- and four-bedroom wards in 2020 after COVID-19 ripped through nursing homes, killing thousands of Ontarians. Some homes refused to upgrade and chose to shut down. Some of those closures are still happening, Elias said.

The province has been pouring money into the issue. It has invested in building and redeveloping long-term care homes as part of a $6.4-billion plan. The province says that as of January, 164 projects that represent a total of nearly 26,000 new and redeveloped beds are “completed, under construction or have ministry approval to begin construction,” said Stuart Osborne, a spokesman for Long-Term Care Minister Natalia Kusendova-Bashta.

The province is also spending $3.1 billion to expand home and community care and has made a community paramedicine program, which sees paramedics provide certain treatments at a patient’s home, permanent.

Osborne said that program has already served about 85,000 people. And the province is spending nearly $5 billion to create positions and train thousands as health-care workers in long-term care homes, Osborne said.

Elias said the investment is welcome and some relief will come in three to five years when the homes are built and operational. She also said the ingredients are all there to make a difference.

“What it comes down to, really, we just need more everything,” Elias said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2026.

Liam Casey, The Canadian Press