Home | Contacts | Classifieds | Archives | Email Us |
How long does it take to get into the City of Deux-Montagnes’s Manoir du Grand Moulin retirement residence? Stewart Pope of 8th Avenue has had an application in for the past six years and he’s growing impatient. Addressing city council on Aug. 12, Pope complained to the mayor about the delay, as well as the fact he was initially unable to obtain application forms that were written in English.
Applied three times
While the Manoir du Grand Moulin is an independently incorporated entity, it was first set up by the City of Deux-Montagnes and its board remains largely composed of city council members. Pope claims he’s filled out applications three times to get into the Manoir, but still has no definite answer as to when he’ll be accepted. Mayor Marc Lauzon told Pope he didn’t understand why he and his wife, Audrey, hadn’t yet been taken.
“There are criteria, so that it can take two years, three years, if everything has been filled out,” said Lauzon, adding that the city currently is doing everything possible to facilitate more seniors from Deux-Montagnes being able to go and live in one of the local retirement residences. But Lauzon cautioned that what city council doesn’t want to do with the issue is to politicize it.
Slowness criticized
Pope was the second person in the last two months to complain to council about slowness in the system for being accepted in one of the residences for seniors in Deux-Montagnes. In July, Darlene Stafechuck of 8th Ave. told council of her experiences trying to get into the HLM-Les-Cascades Deux-Montagnes, which is located a stone’s throw from the Manoir du Grand Moulin. “I’ve got to move from where I am. Apparently it’s not helping my health,” she had said. However, while the Manoir is under the city’s umbrella, the Cascades residence is not.
In an interview at his home last weekend, Pope described the circumstances that compel him to want to move into the Manoir du Grand Moulin as soon as possible. “My wife is 70 years old, I’ve been living out here for 45 years, I’m 69 years old right now, the house is too big for us to take care of,” he said. “What we want to do is to go to a smaller place where I don’t have to cut the grass, where I won’t have maintenance, and where I won’t have the worries of taking care of the house.”
St-Eustache applicants
Pope also maintains that another reason he and his wife need to relocate to the Manoir soon is that his she can no longer climb the stairs in their home. “We don’t want to go to an apartment building where there’s kids running outside the apartment, and we need an elevator to go up and down the stairs,” he said. Stafechuck said in an interview she was concerned that the two local seniors homes are accepting people from St-Eustache, even though there are already many names of applicants from Deux-Montagnes on the waiting lists at both seniors residences.
