County News
A healing home
A wellness and preventative care residential developer looking at Wellington
Imagine your home was looking after you. Imagine a residence that monitored your well-being every day, all day long. And then imagine your home had doctors and health care professionals ready with leading wellness technology and skills nearby to enable you to have the healthiest, longest life possible.
This is the dream and ambition of Joe Lu and his company, Heal House. He is imagining just such a residence in Wellington. Heal House, based in King City, is an emerging wellness tech-centric developer aimed squarely at serving an aging demographic who are not willing to resign themselves to their advancing years or a healthcare system more oriented toward fixing the problem after it arises.
Heal House is about providing preventative care in a warm and attentive setting, focusing on sensing potential health issues before they become debilitating.
Heal House is currently building its first Journey home in Listowel. In Wellington, Lu is looking to build a second 42-room facility on the west edge of the village (between the liquor store and doctor’s clinic).
SENSITIVE RESIDENCE
Many of us already use a range of devices to monitor our health and well-being—from lowtech devices such as bathroom scales and thermometers to watches that monitor your heart rate or detect if you’ve had a fall. Other tools monitor glucose levels and brain activity. Lu is developing places that take this idea to another level—where the facility gathers an array of wellness metrics and monitors continuously. When something goes awry with a resident— slurring speech, sudden changes in metabolism rates, or not having moved for a prolonged period— triggers automatically alert onsite healthcare professionals to a potential issue. Journey homes each have a team of folks ready to respond to these signals and begin a course of treatment straight away. Reactively and proactively.
Lu is inspired by his son. Jayden was born with a rare chromosome duplicate that creates many difficulties, including difficulty developing muscle tone and strength. Lu had been developing and building in the Greater Toronto Area for more than a decade when Jayden came along. Since then, he has dedicated his professional pursuits to improving his son’s life. This has led him on a decade-long quest for treatment and care options. He has scoured the earth, chasing promising therapies and technologies.
Years of search, investigation, and trial and error have resulted in improving prospects for his son. In time, it became clear to Lu that the cumulative knowledge he had gained on this journey could inform the way he built homes. And thus, Heal House was formed.
Lu hopes to dig ground soon and potentially be ready to welcome the first residents to a Journey home in Wellington in a couple of years, but Shire Hall wants the developer to make a formal application— and pay substantial fees and costs before it is permitted to talk to council about his vision for this community.
Lu wants to build in a community where the concept of preventative care living is welcomed and embraced. There are many places eager to enhance and promote health and well-being. If not, Wellington, Heal House will direct its investment, energies and ideas elsewhere.
So far, it is getting only a cold shoulder from Prince Edward County.
Can I go to the ‘Heal’ house for relief from my property taxes, mortgage, food prices and lack of stable jobs in the county? I sure hope so.
Mr Conroy you appear to misunderstand my point. There is a finite limit to the existing water and sewer plant capacity. From my understanding of the remaining capacity in the existing structures, the demand projected by the projects I have referenced exceeds that capacity. Assuming that the monopoly is ‘busted up’, how does one allocate capacity between these projects? Then what happens if Kaitlin wishes to build?
I fully agree that the Consultant’s population growth predictions are a flight of fancy. The Province forecasts a fraction of that growth. However, there will be a need for expansion even using the Province’s forecast.
From what I understand, Council has indicated that they would look at an incremental expansion of capacity as opposed to a “build it and they will come” approach.
We are approaching the point that the ‘monopoly’ holder will have to ‘put up or shut up’. If they start building you will see the growth you have been advocating and we will have the benefit of the up front payments they have committed to. If they don’t then we will have to wait and see IF any of these other projects actually go ahead.
With all due respect, the Sterling Homes, Maple street project and this proposal combined create more demand than the existing system can handle. Presumably, even though you don’t like it, Kaitlin seems to be getting ready to build. You have been exhorting people to protest and get Council to press pause. Well this is about what you can expect.
You appear to be confusing my keen interest in seeing new residential homebuilding in our community with my dismay at the extravagant infrastructure proposed and the untested assumptions driving it. Simply put, we need new housing supply in Wellington. Currently one developer holds all the waterworks capacity. This monopoly should be busted up. Let the market work.