They were promised refunds. Instead, seniors are still waiting on $15M from a failed development
CBC
More than 120 people waiting on roughly $15 million tied up in deposits they paid on a failed seniors complex development will have to wait longer for their refunds after the group behind the project was granted creditor protection.
Charitable organization Trinity Ravine Community Inc. was granted protection from its creditors three weeks ago, citing detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and "skyrocketing" construction costs. The move comes seven years after it announced the Trinity Ravine Towers development — a two-tower, 605-unit "55-plus Christian lifestyle community" in Scarborough, just east of Toronto.
Trinity Ravine is now going through a court-supervised sale of its assets and development land, which is expected to be complete by the end of August. It says once the land is sold, it intends to pay back those waiting for a refund.
But that means people who purchased life leases with the project will be kept waiting at least another five months for their refunds, despite the organization already missing its promised date for returning the deposits.
"It's almost criminal," said Lisa Lyn, who's been waiting four years for her $116,000 refund.
CBC News first reported on Trinity Ravine in December when some life-lease purchasers complained they were getting the runaround when it came to getting their deposits back. At the time, the organization promised refunds would be paid by mid-January.
While Trinity Ravine is going through Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) proceedings, it can't repay any money and life-lease purchasers can't take legal action, leaving some in limbo and priced out of the already expensive Toronto-area housing market.
"I can't even afford to move anywhere," Lyn said. "It's very devastating."
Lyn purchased a life lease in 2016. She asked for her deposit back for the first time in 2018 after the project wasn't moving forward.
A life lease is not ownership, but the right to occupy a unit for a long period of time — often a lifetime.
Trinity Ravine, which is affiliated with Pentecostal church Global Kingdom Ministries, originally planned for the project to be complete in March 2019. Then, it pushed the date to March 2022.
It touted a community that would help seniors live independently with programming, social activities and tailored amenities. But construction never began, and the parking lot where it was supposed to be built next to the church remains empty.
Lyn put down a deposit for herself, her mother and grandmother to live in a penthouse. Instead, her grandmother was recently moved into a long-term care home, and Lyn is waiting on her deposit before planning to move.
"It wrecks everything, all your plans," she said.
Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia can all expect between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall this weekend.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.