SEIU Healthcare launches campaign to stop Chartwell and Ontario's greedy retirement home industry from gouging seniors and shortchanging workers

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SEIU Healthcare

Oct 27, 2026, 08:03 ET

RICHMOND HILL, ON, Oct. 27, 2026 /CNW/ -- SEIU Healthcare today launched a province-wide campaign calling on Chartwell and the corporate giants throughout the wider retirement home industry to stop raising service fees on seniors and improve wages and working conditions for the staff who care for them.

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Retirement homes are the hottest thing in Canadian real estate right now. Investors have poured a record $8 billion into seniors housing this year, and no one is cashing in on a bigger scale than Chartwell. Business at Chartwell is booming. Revenue keeps climbing and profits keep growing, quarter after quarter. Every month, its investors get a cash dividend, and executives get paid in the millions.

Where does that money come from? Out of seniors' pockets and exploited workers who care for them.

Ontario caps how much a retirement home can raise rent each year. It does not cap charges for care and meals. Retirement homes can raise those fees as much as they want, and Chartwell has. Some Chartwell residents have watched their total monthly cost climb 28 per cent in four years. This is more than inflation. This is an out-of-control market, with Donald Trump and his billionaire friends among its owners, jacking up prices so they can get richer.

The personal support workers and other frontline staff in those buildings have not shared in the industry's price-gouging profits. Instead, they get more residents per shift, less time with each one, and wages that don't match their work.

SEIU Healthcare is demanding Chartwell and every retirement home operator in Ontario immediately take the following steps. First, cap annual increases in service fees for current residents at the same guideline that caps their rent. Second, pay the people who deliver the care wages that cover their rent, buy their groceries, and guarantee workplace protections.

"These retirement home giants tell the public they exist to make people's lives better. This is a lie. Just ask a resident who just opened her ever-growing bill. Ask the PSW on her floor," said Tyler Downey, President of SEIU Healthcare Canada. "Chartwell's profits are up 34 per cent. That money came from gouging Ontario seniors and shortchanging the workers who care for them."

Ads begin running across Ontario today, and the campaign will continue through the fall. SEIU Healthcare will present its petition to Chartwell's board of trustees, with signatures of residents, families and workers being collected at retirementhomegiants.seiuhealthcare.ca until Chartwell takes action.

SEIU Healthcare represents more than 75,000 frontline healthcare workers across Ontario in hospitals, long-term care, retirement homes, home care and community care.

To view the ads click below:

Facts

  • Chartwell owns more than 80 retirement residences in Ontario and more than 160 across Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta.
  • Chartwell's property revenue was $320.4 million in the second quarter of 2026, up 19.5 per cent from a year earlier. Funds from operations were $90.5 million in the same quarter, up 34 per cent.
  • Chartwell has posted twelve consecutive quarters of double-digit growth in funds from operations per unit.
  • Chartwell pays shareholders a cash distribution of more than $17-million every month (or over $200-million each year) and just raised it another 2 per cent in March 2026.
  • Chartwell CEO Vlad Volodarski received $3.5 million in total compensation in 2024.
  • Workers in Ontario retirement homes can earn as little as the provincial minimum wage of $17.95 per hour.
  • Chartwell and the wider industry refuse to provide basic WSIB protections to workers.
  • U.S. President Donald Trump's most recent financial disclosure lists as millions of dollars of shares in Ontario retirement homes.
  • Sunrise Senior Living, which operates retirement homes in Ontario, is selling to the investment firm of Trump ally and billionaire Michael Dell, in a deal worth more than US$1 billion.
  • In April 2026, Welltower, the American seniors housing giant, acquired Ontario's Amica chain in a $4.6-billion deal, the largest seniors housing sale in Canadian history.
  • Investors have poured a record $8 billion into Canadian seniors housing in 2026, blowing past the previous annual record of $4.9 billion set in 2007.
  • Industry analysts project seniors housing will deliver higher operating income growth than any other real estate class through 2030.

About SEIU Healthcare
SEIU Healthcare builds better outcomes for over 75,000 frontline healthcare workers across Ontario through dedicated advocacy, strategic partnerships, and innovative solutions. For more information, visit www.seiuhealthcare.ca.

SOURCE SEIU Healthcare

For media inquiries, contact: Corey Johnson, SEIU Healthcare, Mobile: 416-529-8909, Email: [email protected]

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