This building, located at 1115 Nelson St. (at Thurlow), began as exclusively seniors supportive housing—exactly the kind of housing we need more of as our population ages and more people require affordable, supportive places to live. But instead of expanding it, the federal government has neglected the housing that already exists, failing to maintain it to even the most basic safety standards.
The story of Nicholson Towers is also one of offloading responsibility - a decade ago, the building was sold to a non-profit housing provider. Subject to cost pressures of maintaining the building and carrying the debt, the non-profit has opened the door to non-seniors on social assistance, paying higher rents.
These financial pressures have taken their toll. Residents say that safety standards and staffing have not been maintained, the building has become more and more chaotic, with seniors in particular feeling less and less safe. And the federal government, whose historic investments built public housing across the country? Too often missing in action.
The last federal funding for Nicholson Towers arrived 15 years ago, in 2009. Fire alarms were installed but to this day these elders were never deemed worthy of sprinklers. Think about that: in 2025, firefighters are pointing to a lack of sprinklers as a key reason this fire caused such devastation.
What has happened to Nicholson Towers is what’s happening in seniors’ housing across the country—piecemeal funding, no long-term plan, and a slow-motion abandonment of federal responsibility. An abandonment of the public.
Our senior neighbours deserve better. They deserve homes that are safe, well-maintained, and built to support them in their later years—not buildings left to deteriorate, with life-threatening consequences.
We need a care and repair plan for social housing—one that funds deep retrofits and upgrades, including heat pumps to get the buildings off fossil fuels, and get cooling to vulnerable neighbours to protect them from the heat waves, heat domes and smoke days now baked into our future.
We should employ local workers to maintain and improve our housing stock with Canadian-made materials, and expand seniors’ and disability housing to meet the growing need. That means real and ongoing investment, not one-time funding announcements from two decades ago. It means treating homes for low-income seniors and other vulnerable neighbours as critical infrastructure, not an afterthought.
Elders built this country. They made enormous sacrifices to win the freedoms and build the community, economy and public services that are the connective tissue of our country. They deserve to age in dignity and security. And they certainly deserve better than what happened at Nicholson Towers.
Sources:
News report of fire
Last federal funding announcement
Sale of building to non-profit in 2015