There are 1,500 people over the age of 65 in our vicinity. Of those, 800 live alone. I don't think that aging in place is the silver bullet. I'm quite concerned that we're not thinking about what that will look like when we get there. In long-term care, for example, people are very elderly.
There are a lot of needs that we have to maintain our independence, even when we are healthy and younger and strong. These are simple things, like getting groceries into the home, being able to connect with other people—social connections—being able to get out to get to medical appointments. Those kinds of things become very real challenges, especially for these folks who are quite elderly and living alone.
In the U.K., they have started a program called the Silver Line, which is a helpline for older adults. In their first year, they had over a million calls. It's a 24-hour, 365-day call line. They have about 3,000 volunteers, and I think they said 10,000 calls a week now. They have volunteers who are simply volunteering to befriend isolated seniors.
There is a tendency to think that communal living is not great. I was interested in hearing the witness from P.E.I. talk about how seniors prefer shared spaces. There is a lot of benefit for seniors to share spaces. They can support each other a lot better, and it alleviates some of the social isolation. Some of those seniors may even have family and friends that others don't, and those families are quite willing to reach out, as we've seen in Langley Lodge.