As a result, many low-income seniors don’t have enough money for potentially life-saving security systems for their homes.
To help ease the financial burden, the city of Prince Albert, in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, is providing seniors with free security systems such as smoke alarms, deadbolts, and carbon monoxide detectors, according to CKOM.com.
“Seniors are a pretty vulnerable segment of the population and I’m particularly pleased by this as a senior and I know I’m going to be a little more protective conscious,” one senior, John Holash, told the news source.
The new program is available to individual seniors who earn less than $20,000 per year, or $30,000 for a couple, and Yogi Huyghebaert, the provincial minister in charge of the project says about five hundred people in the town are eligible for the security installations.
“We felt that it was more necessary for low income seniors to have access to this and also that have experienced a break in or a home invasion, they should have the first chance of having this done,” Huyghebaert said.
The report did not discuss whether these security systems will be available to seniors in assisted living communities or just in private homes.