It's not over yet.
Though the move has been made, and 10 former residents of the enriched housing units at St. Mary's Villa are in their new homes, there are still discussions ongoing between the tenants and their families and the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR).
Jim Ramsay, the son of Alice Ramsay, one of the tenants forced by the SHR to move from the Villa with less than a week's notice, met with the Journal last week to speak about the situation.
"There is activity," Ramsay stated while seated on a couch on the main floor of Caleb Village in Humboldt - the building his mother and five other former enriched housing tenants from the Villa now call home.
Ramsay said that he received a phone call from Maura Davies, the CEO of the Saskatoon Health Region, on February 23, apologizing for the situation.
But that's not quite good enough, from his perspective.
"The Region has never apologized for their actions. They still haven't taken responsibility," he said.
He and Davies talked about that, he said. He also told her that the apologies received by the families so far were platitudes as long as the Region was using "the situation at the Villa to justify the treatment of these people."
The tenants of the 10 enriched housing units were moved, the SHR has stated, because of flooring issues in Dust Wing, another part of the Villa. The 32 residents of Dust Wing have to be moved out to other parts of the Villa because the foundations under that wing are wood and they are splitting from the heavy load.
The enriched housing units were needed to house some of those 32 residents.
The residents of enriched housing were informed of this just eight days before they moved into new homes. They were informed as they were eating supper that night, without family around them. At a meeting the next day, it was implied they had until the end of March to move, but a day later, they found out it was to be much sooner.
Many residents reported feeling confused, saddened, and stressed by the move. Family members said they felt bullied by the SHR.
Ramsay is saying now that part of the "debriefing" process from this incident "has to be the Saskatoon Health Region accepting responsibility for how poorly they treated people, and final compensation."
The SHR has committed to paying each evicted tenant's entire first month's rent at the new facility, covering the increased costs of rent at the new facilities for one year, and covering some other expenses associated with moving and setting up house.
For some families of these tenants, that's not enough.
Ramsay said he has proposed a two-step process to the SHR - first, that the region meets with the families as a group to deal with their concerns. Step two would have them participate in the debriefing process.
As of Monday, he had not heard anything definitive from the Region regarding his proposal. He had been promised a face-to-face meeting with Davies for sometime this week to discuss it.
A debriefing session has been set up for the evening of March 8. The media have not been invited to that meeting, though the tenants and their families have been.
While all this communication has been ongoing between Ramsay and the SHR, he has also been fielding calls from other concerned family members, "who are equally upset."
He heard from one man, he said, whose mother moved to the care home in LeRoy. Her belongings didn't make it to her new home the same day that she did, so she spent her first night there without her clothes.
"Where does the pain end here? Where does it stop?" he asked.
Ramsay's mother also had issues with her move - her bed went missing for a time before being located on another floor of her new building.
Ramsay's mother and others were also moved about 10 hours later than was originally planned, so they were not settled in their new homes until close to midnight on moving day.
What the families want now, what Ramsay is trying to do, "is to get the Region to own up to their actions, to accept responsibility for their actions," he said.
The way that they did things would be good if they were running a pulp mill, he said - "but it has no merit in health care. It's just not appropriate."
A slum landlord has to give more notice of eviction than a week, Ramsay indicated.
The SHR has claimed that they have helped the tenants find appropriate housing.
But rent at Caleb Village, for instance, is about three times what they were paying at the Villa.
"Who can afford this place in 11 months?" Ramsay asked. Some are already worried about that.
"How can you call it appropriate if it's not affordable?"
The SHR has to think again, he said, or make it affordable for these people.
Ramsay is also bothered by the SHR statements that they felt they had a moral responsibility to move quickly on this move - due to the state of the floors in Dust Wing.
It would have been more moral, in Ramsay's opinion, to give the tenants more time to adjust to the move.
Ramsay wonders, if the residents of Dust Wing were not in immediate danger, why were the residents forced to be out in a week?
"I think this was a strategic plan to vacate now," he said, calling the move "a management tactic."
The SHR is using the flooring issue as an excuse, he feels.
Ramsay is also upset at the SHR's claims that they feel that safety trumps all.
"Safety can never trump abuse," he said. "What they did was not safe to (the tenants)," he said. "It could have been, but they chose not to."
What Ramsay feels is the main thing that went wrong with this situation is that "they were not recognized as human beings," he said.
"If the SHR can treat seniors in this manner today, what are they capable of doing?" he asked.
The real tragedy, he said, is that this whole situation was avoidable.
A quick conclusion to this would be in everyone's best interest, he noted, adding that he looks forward to the Ministry of Health's investigation into this situation.
No one from the SHR was available for comment as of press time.
