An assisted living project is being discussed for Morris and surrounding area.
Chris Hamblin is deputy mayor for the Town of Morris.
"We are very preliminary at this point. What we've done is we've got a few municipalities together, the Town of Morris, the RM of Morris, the RM of Montcalm. We've been in discussions with some other areas. Bringing those people together to first of all assess the need, and everyone is in agreement that we need to have more rooms for these people. Even though some of the people that are involved have their own facilities in their smaller communities, they are recognizing that it's not enough."
Hamblin says they've been losing valuable members of the community due to a lack of assisted living facilities.
"We have seen a number of people in our area that have had to leave to find assisted living. We don't have it in town. We have a few smaller units in some of our surrounding communities but there's not enough for the demand. We've lost some pretty valuable citizens of our community to other places because that's where they've had to go to find suitable housing."
She notes a location has not yet been selected for the new assisted living centre that's being talked about.
"We're looking at a regional concept. What we're hoping will happen is that we will be able to establish a major centre facility in one of the centres. We haven't designated it as any one particular site yet...Then we're hoping that we can tap into some of the auxillary units that are already in place and offer some support to those facilities. Kind of that whole concept of efficiencies by greater numbers."
Hamblin says a consultant has been hired to assist with the process.
She adds once bylaws are in place, the committee/organization involved will start moving ahead with more detailed discussions.