Population aging in a number of countries has shone a nasty new light on the limitations of public/private partnerships in fulfilling the promise of affordable housing.
Why? Because the affordable housing crisis is expected to get worse for seniors, partly because of the growing need for accessible units, e.g. single floor dwellings or elevators for less mobile occupants. Equally worrisome is a need for on-going supports.
When it comes to public/private partnerships to provide ordinary, unsupported housing, negotiation over pricing and performance takes place over the design, approval and construction phase. Did the developer attempt to take advantage of renegotiation loopholes to reduce a commitment? An example is the entirely legal and much abused ‘viability assessment’ built into public/private partnership law in the United Kingdom.
Or did the developer cut corners nobody noticed, or didn’t notice until too late? Whether legal or illegal, the completed the project is ‘delivered’ to the public entity providing some or all of the funding. Then, with the exception of lawsuits over later-discovered profit-taking by a developer (e.g. walls not insulated to agreed standards), the matter is closed. Perhaps a profit-minded developer has extracted another pound of flesh, perhaps not. But the opportunity for renegotiating profit is more or less dead.
Not necessarily so when a developer continues to manage the properties, or a private company is contracted to provide substantial support services, such as those to the disabled, or to seniors.
A recent scandal involves the bankruptcy of the largest private equity company managing senior support residences in the United States. It would appear that the provision of supports to seniors who need care presented an irresistible opportunity for squeezing a little more profit out of the support packages, diminishing the quality of life of the residents at best, and threatening health, safety and even life, at worst.
With the aging populations in some countries, it would seem that the profit-taking hunger of private companies may well need to be much more aggressively monitored and curtailed, if society wishes a reasonable standard of care for its older citizens. Read more in the Washington Post: Overdoses, Bedsores, Broken Bones: What Happened When A Private-Equity Firm Sought To Care For Society’s Most Vulnerable
Lest there be a knee-jerk reaction that the public sector can do the job better, however, there are also ongoing issues in jurisdictions where the funds provided to public sector or non-profit managers is not enough to adequately supply supports. A recent example of what looks suspiciously like this kind of problem comes from Canada, where one territory and one province would appear to unable to adequately supply humane support to long term care residents, at least compared to other jurisdictions. Read more at the CBC:
N.L. seniors restrained in long-term care twice the national average: Report
