Protesters are picketing outside a Halifax nursing home after the facility proposed that employees and visitors should start paying to park on the property in the fall.
Family members who have loved ones living at Saint Vincent’s Nursing Home on Windsor Street say the parking fees are an extra expense they simply can’t afford.
“There are people who come to visit their loved ones, they’re here from early in the morning until that loved one goes to bed at night, and a lot do not live in the city, like myself,” says Linda Slaunwhite, whose mother lives at the nursing home. “I don’t have the option to take a bus.”
“I’m paying not only for the cost of my mother to be in the home, but we’re paying for a sitter, and attendant to be with her as well, plus other services we feel she needs,” says Ian Johnson.
The nursing home will be holding meetings to discuss parking fees and finances of the non-profit home.
There are rumours circulating that parking will cost $100 a month, but staff say fees haven’t been set, and no one knows how they will be structured.
Executive director Kristin Schmitz says provincial funding only increased by one per cent this year and the money needed to maintain the nursing home has to come from somewhere.
“You either cut services or you look at revenue generation,” says Schmitz. “And we don’t feel we want to cut any services to the residents to compromise the quality of care.”
Health and Wellness Minister David Wilson declined to comment on the matter, but his department says individual nursing home boards decide on fees, which means every nursing home in Nova Scotia won’t necessarily start demanding parking fees.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Ron Shaw
