Seniors service struggling with rundown vans

TORONTO – An integral service for many seniors in Toronto’s east-end has started a blitz of the beaches neighbourhood looking for funding.

Neighbourhood Link is a community hub that offers career counselling and housing but also offers a quasi-taxi service to seniors in the area.

Olive Dodds is 103 years old and counts on a ride three times a week; once to go to the doctors and twice to play euchre with other seniors at a centre on Coxwell Avenue.

“I would have to use a taxi otherwise,” she said.

But a real cab is much more expensive than the Neighbourhood Link services – most of which are free. The taxi-service is approximately $1 every kilometre.

Chair of Neighbourhood Link Mary Christie said the service helps people avoid the “little stumbling blocks that make the difference between being in your home and being able to have your coffee in the garden and being in a nursing home.”

“People need to be able to make their own choices about where they’re going to spend their senior years,” she said.

Christie said money is a constant issue, saying they have the capacity to provide much more service but lack the funding. So they’re going to local businesses, residents and banks to raise funds.

“We desperately need a new van because our vans are falling apart,” she said.

The service provides approximately 12,000 rides each year but is currently struggling with aging vehicles.

“As time goes on, things start to wear down a bit,” one of the drivers, Alem Abebe said. “That inconveniences our clients and then we really have to shuffle them again, reschedule them again when we have a break down like that.”

Every time one of the vans breaks down, Neighbourhood Link is forced to borrow another vehicle, he said.