The critical importance of retirement village resident submissions to Victorian state government inquiries is that they are actually living the experience not simply 'working in the field'. They know what is wrong because they have experienced it, suffered from it.
Victorian retirement village residents find that there is almost zero protection when something goes wrong, or the system to obtain that protection is so cumbersome, so demanding on them, that surrender is ultimately the chosen option. And village operators know that and use it to their own financial advantage.
All this from a Victorian Labor government that fails to enforce the law as it is currently written, let alone to improve it to protect the very people it was originally written to protect.
"The law was clearly on the side of the village residents. It was a lack of access to affordable, quick, decisive enforcement of the law that failed them most". - Retvilldotnet
Retirement villages, the process of for-profit operators seeking financial reward from this commercial activity under the guise of the provision of benevolent housing for older Victorians. Sadly and particularly in Victoria the commercial risks to operators are dampened by statute whilst at the same time the commercial rewards are enhanced by statute.
For Victorian retirees who make that fateful decision to enter a retirement village it is the complete opposite. The payment of the capital value of the village unit, not for ownership simply occupancy. The payment of all the costs of property ownership with none of the rewards.
"Families need to be aware that what we are talking about here is the transfer of intergenerational wealth, not to families but into the pockets of corporations. Shame about the elderly not having enough money for aged care."
So what is wrong with Victorian Retirement villages, the answer is -
- Bureaucrats who don't really know or fully understand the product they are producing legislation for.
- Legislators who don't really know or fully understand the product they are enacting legislation for.
- State Governments who are far too easily seduced by slick marketing from the industry.
- A failure of all of the three parties above to listen to the one group of people who really do know and fully understand the product, the village residents and their families.
Village residents understand because they suffer financially from the legislative inequities produced by Bureaucrats, Legislators, State Governments.
