Residents of Ont. assisted living home temporarily relocated to safer living arrangements

It's moving day for the residents of the infested Huronia Guest Home in Stayner after the community pulled together to temporarily relocate them to safer and healthier living arrangements.

"It's an unfortunate situation, but I'm very glad that a number of services are there to help these residents," said Clearview Mayor Doug Measures. "South Georgian Bay Ontario Health Team, the Red Cross, the County of Simcoe emergency social services team. There's a lot of great work going on, and I'm very, very proud of that in our community."

After the terrible living conditions at the privately-owned assisted living home became public, bylaw stepped in to help the residents, who were infested with bed bugs.

The residents were cleaned and decontaminated before being taken to a nearby motel and were provided with new clothes and donations of food and other resources from the community.

The home previously had a domiciliary care contract with the County to provide resident subsidies, but the landlord failed to uphold living and care standards.

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Measures expressed his frustration at the lack of specific authorities to assist residents in similar situations and called on the province to find a solution to the gap in oversight of privately-run facilities.

"Our authorities lie in properties and property standards, and that's what we can do, and that's what we're enforcing is a property standards issue when it comes to the bed bug abatement issue. That's all we can do at this point," the mayor noted.

Measures praised the community for coming together to help the residents in need and said that the last several weeks had demonstrated the generosity and caring spirit of Clearview Township.