Physician Refuses Parents' $11,000-a-Month Vancouver Senior Home Plan
Updated
Updated · Twisted Sifter · Aug 1
Physician Refuses Parents' $11,000-a-Month Vancouver Senior Home Plan
3 articles · Updated · Twisted Sifter · Aug 1
Summary
A 34-year-old physician says he will not subsidize his parents’ planned move into an $11,000 CAD-a-month senior residence in Vancouver’s affluent Kerrisdale neighborhood.
His parents, both in their late 60s, have serious health issues—his mother has slow-growing cancer and his father has mild Alzheimer’s—but he argues the residence is financially unsustainable and may not meet their future care needs.
The couple has about CAD $8,000 a month in pre-tax income and roughly CAD $800,000 in assets, yet already breaks even while paying CAD $2,800 in rent, making higher care levels at 2 to 3 times the base cost especially hard to support.
He says he has proposed cheaper quality alternatives, but those were rejected, leaving him worried that covering an open-ended, potentially decade-long shortfall would limit his own housing, career and relationship choices.
The dispute centers on whether adult children should fund a luxury standard of elder care when parents still have meaningful resources but not enough to sustain the lifestyle they want.