Securitising Seniors Housing: The Financialisation of Real Estate and Social Reproduction in Retirement and Long-Term Care Homes

Abstract

The financialisation of seniors housing has reshaped Canadian long-term care homes (LTCs) and retirement communities since the 1990s. Investors have flocked to profit from the demographic “grey wave” driving demand. Financialised firms (private equity, institutions, publicly listed companies, and real estate investment trusts) have consolidated ownership of 33% of seniors housing (22% and 42% of LTCs and retirement homes). Facilitated by neoliberal healthcare reforms, welfare state restructuring, and the privatisation of social reproduction, the business strategies of financial firms rely on the dual nature of seniors housing as both (1) real estate, and (2) an operating business (delivering hospitality and healthcare services). As real estate, firms profit from repositioning properties and by raising rents. As an operating business, firms raise revenues by adding on escalating private-pay healthcare and hospitality fees over time; and cut expenses by extracting more value from the socially reproductive labour of care workers, who are largely precariously employed, racialised women.