Michelle Griffin
Social Affairs Editor, The Age. Thursday 8 December 2011

SHE may have lost her right leg, but Sister Pat Timoney is prepared to stand her ground. The feisty one-legged nun has joined forces with high profile GP Sally Cockburn, best known as 3AW's broadcaster Dr Feelgood, to save 18 units for the elderly that Bayside Council plans to shut down.

The council says they will close the units they've managed for the past 40 years, on two sites in Sandringham and Beaumaris, because they are too expensive to maintain. But despite assurances from the council that new homes will be found for all 16 remaining residents within the next 20 months, the nun and the doctor are determined to fight the decision - through VCAT and the courts if necessary.

''It's a furphy to say the units are decaying,'' said Sister Pat, who moved into the Sandringham units 18 months ago after her amputation. The unit was then customised for her wheelchair.

''They send these people in with their pseudo-sympathetic faces to reassure us, but you can see, no matter what they say, it's a land grab.''

The Sandringham units are next to one of the two childcare centres that Bayside Council plans to close in the next two years.

Dr Cockburn, a Bayside resident, started campaigning against the closure because she fears for the tenants' well-being. ''Everyone knows that if you evict elderly people, they have adverse health outcomes,'' she said.

One tenant had a stroke the day after he was told he would have to move. Dr Cockburn wants local GPs to issue notifications that many of these residents are not fit to move. ''These are elderly people with very little support, trying to get by,'' she said. ''Ageing in place is very important, and this is the very antithesis of ageing in place.''

''I want to stay here until the end of time,'' said Alwyn, Sister Pat's 90-year-old neighbour.

''I'm fit enough to survive out there,'' said72-year-old neighbour Joy, ''but many of these poor people can't survive if they move.''

A drastic shortage of low-cost housing for the elderly makes it hard to find new homes for the tenants, warn housing workers.

A new report by Swinburne University reveals that the number of independent living units - low-cost homes for the elderly - have reduced by 30 per cent across Australia in the past 10 years.

Housing worker April Bragg, from the Housing for the Aged Action Group, said she was already unable to find homes for three local octogenarians facing eviction after landlords raised their rents.

But the units cost $145,000 a year to maintain and are ''not suitable for the needs of frail older persons,'' the council said in a statement provided to The Age.

While Dr Cockburn and Sandringham state MP Murray Thompson would like a housing association to take over the units, the council said feedback from two housing associations - Port Phillip and Loddon Mallee- suggested the sites were unsuitable for social housing redevelopments.

Housing Minister Wendy Lovell expressed concern ''about moves by council to reduce housing for aged people'' but said that 94 extra community housing properties for older tenants had been created in Rosebud, Mornington and Dandenong in the past year.

Sister Pat was unimpressed. ''Who wants to live in Dandenong? I don't.''

Listen to Dr Cockburn's 3AW podcast on social housing here

To read the article as it appeared in The Age click here

back to top