From dream to nightmare: Distressing reality of retirement living for Aussie seniors
- Replies 15
Content warning: This article mentions subjects related to suicide, which might be sensitive for some. Reader discretion is advised.
The golden years are often envisioned as a time of relaxation and comfort, a reward for a lifetime of hard work.
Retirement villages across Australia promise just that, with the allure of safety, community, and low-maintenance living.
However, for one Aussie senior, her experience at a retirement village was far from the peaceful retirement she had hoped for.
Instead, it became a source of profound distress, leading her to contemplate suicide.
Ninety-year-old Maurine Moore reached a point in her life at a retirement village in Melbourne where she considered suicide due to her difficult circumstances.
‘I felt that bad,’ she said, tearing up. ‘I was really worn out.’
Earlier this year, the retired child psychologist and volunteer, who struggles with mobility, packed up her antique furniture, boxed her extensive collection of books, and carefully packed her cherished Royal Doulton figurines before leaving the home she had lived in for 15 years.
Maurine departed in March after Pinnacle Living, the owner of the retirement village in the tranquil Balwyn suburb, threatened to evict her in a letter sent just three days before Christmas.
Her violation? Consistently breaching a smoking ban that was implemented in 2019, a decade after her arrival, as a result of a residents' vote that declared the entire village smoke-free, including her home and courtyard.
‘I was 16 when I started and unfortunately became addicted,’ Maurine shared.
‘I did give up in 2018 with a great deal of help until the pressure started with the place I was living at…I just went back to it when the pressure got too much…and I'm ashamed of it.’
She described her treatment at the village over the past few years as ‘abominable’.
ABC Investigations and 7.30 have revealed alarming accounts of exorbitant fees and unfair contracts that older Australians have encountered when entering the multi-billion-dollar retirement village sector.
These include complicated and unclear agreements (some featuring algebraic formulas), price gouging, intimidation, and deceptive marketing claims.
Every year, thousands of retirees are attracted to retirement villages by the allure of safety, enjoyment, and low-maintenance living.
Over 250,000 residents inhabit more than 2,500 villages nationwide.
The industry's leading association claims that these homes are, on average, 43 per cent cheaper than the median house price in their respective postcodes, with residents reportedly 41 per cent happier.
However, Maurine described her experience as more akin to hell than a paradise.
Maurine noted that her relationship with the village began to decline in 2017 when she took Pinnacle to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) for not repairing her library room, which had flooded and damaged her books.
Although Pinnacle eventually agreed to address the issue, she felt that the dynamics shifted afterwards.
‘One manager always kept saying, “You are confused,” as if you had Alzheimer's,’ she recounted.
On one occasion, Maurine claims a staff member blocked her car while she was attempting to leave the village, smiling as he walked away for 15 minutes, causing her to be late for a doctor's appointment.
Then, in 2019, the village implemented a smoking ban.
Following that, she received numerous emails and visits to her unit, permitted under her contract, along with legal letters and demands for costly repairs that she couldn't afford. This was compounded by accusations of a ‘putrid stench’ coming from her home.
In a letter dated December 16, 2020, just before Christmas, Pinnacle outlined several breaches of her contract that needed to be resolved by January 27—a challenging deadline given the holiday shutdown.
Maurine was mortified by the claims made in the letter, including ‘a general state of uncleanliness’, which she firmly denies.
Pinnacle complained about ‘the presence of smoke stains over all surfaces, both within and outside of the apartment’.
The letter stated that she was required to dismantle the air conditioning and ‘remove and clean all mechanical systems, including the air conditioning cassette unit, exhaust fans, range hoods, ductwork, registers and controllers; remove and clean all power points and light switches’.
It also required that all fixtures and fittings, including furniture, soft furnishings, carpets, and underlay, be cleaned ‘in an attempt to remove the putrid stench within and permeating from the apartment’.
Additionally, it stipulated that by January 27, Maurine needed to ‘professionally repaint ceilings, doors and walls with undercoat including stain killers such as Zinsser B.I.N. and two coats of Dulux internal paint, matching the (pre) existing colours if surfaces are damaged from cleaning performed’.
‘The walls were not yellow, they were lying…there was nothing wrong with the place,’ Maurine argued.
Maurine, who has limited finances and struggles with mobility—using a stick to walk—does not have any immediate family to rely on for support.
Distressed by her situation, she reached out to the non-profit Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG) for assistance.
As the letters from Pinnacle kept arriving, HAAG worker Shane McGrath intervened, stating to the village, ‘This persistent and baseless harassment of my client must stop.’
‘The tone of your emails has been aggressive and hostile towards Maurine as if you think you can brute-force your way to whatever outcome you want, and you consistently appear more interested in causing her distress than in achieving any practical outcome,’ he stated in one 2021 email.
‘This can only be either deliberate or reckless harassment. Please stop. It is not helping you, and it is—as I have said—causing needless and severe distress to my client, a resident of the village you manage who is a frail, elderly woman.’
‘This is a moment where everyone can step back, take a breath, and figure out how to de-escalate and move forward together,’ McGrath added.
McGrath visited Maurine several times and noted that her unit was clean and well-maintained, contrary to claims of its poor condition.
Throughout 2021, Maurine, then 87, was hospitalised three times due to health issues. As the conflict continued, Pinnacle brought in lawyers to draft some of the correspondence.
In a letter to Pinnacle's lawyers in February 2022, McGrath pointed out that Maurine had been attempting to quit smoking for years.
‘She has been unable to, which she finds deeply embarrassing and shameful,’ the letter read.
‘She is also not mobile enough to leave the village every time she needs to smoke.’
‘There is no practical way she can comply with the demand that she stop smoking on site altogether, and she would not have moved into the village had such a rule existed at the time,’ it continued.
HAAG Head Fiona York described Maurine's case as one of the most severe she has encountered.
‘It's [the village is] built on a hill, so she can't walk out of the village to be able to smoke,’ she pointed out.
‘And as a lifelong smoker, it's really difficult [for her] to be able to stop.’
‘We tried to negotiate with the village to be able to find a reasonable way to resolve this.’
‘We proposed that there be an area where she was able to smoke that wouldn't impact on other residents, and we tried to negotiate with the village management.’
‘Unfortunately, they dug their heels in,’ Ms York added.
Pinnacle stated that any agreement would necessitate Maurine to construct a self-contained room in her courtyard ‘which does not permit smoke to emanate from outside of that area’.
This expense was too much for Maurine, who was already facing financial difficulties.
On February 28, 2022, she received a breach and termination notice requiring her to vacate her home by May 4.
HAAG sought an injunction from VCAT, which was approved, but the stress was becoming overwhelming for Maurine.
‘You're made to feel isolated, yes. And if you're the bad person, no one wants to associate with you, in case they start getting picked on,’ she lamented.
‘So, I started keeping myself away from the residents, although I will say most of the residents were very supportive.’
After enduring the anxiety of potential eviction, Maurine signed a deed of settlement and release in October 2023, legally committing not to smoke on the premises, which resolved the VCAT case.
However, just three days before Christmas, she was caught smoking again, prompting Pinnacle's lawyers to send a letter threatening that they ‘would seek orders for her to vacate the premises forthwith’ and to recover legal costs.
In January, while Maurine was still residing there, fellow residents received a four-page letter titled ‘Special Levy’ that detailed the ongoing smoking dispute, indirectly referring to her and stating that Pinnacle had incurred $92,000 in legal expenses to address the issue.
According to the letter, ‘costs are not provided for in the routine village budget’, which meant that each household would need to contribute a levy of nearly $2,200.
‘I think that was to turn the residents against me,’ she speculated.
By this point, Maurine was 90 years old and lacked the funds to continue battling the dispute, making the stress overwhelming for her.
‘I was so nervous and so upset, I was forced to give in,’ she said.
She moved out in late March and is now renting in another retirement village in a peaceful Melbourne suburb, paying on a month-to-month basis.
In May, Pinnacle proposed to buy her home for the price she paid 15 years ago, $490,000, minus various fees, which would leave her with just $343,000, denying her any capital gains and resulting in a significant financial loss.
According to CoreLogic data, property prices in the suburb have surged over 150 per cent during the same period.
In its letter, the company claimed her home was in an ‘extremely poor state’ and would require over $100,000 in repairs, which they would waive if she accepted their offer.
The letter also noted that they couldn't specify how long it would take to repair, resell, and settle her property, citing a subdued market and it was ‘taking a long time to find new residents’.
‘Meanwhile, we continue to spend more in legal fees to assert our rights under the deed of settlement,’ the letter continued.
If she agreed to the offer, the company stated it would withdraw the legal action against her.
Maurine decided to accept the deal.
‘They have turned what could have been a pleasant old age into sheer hell,’ she remarked.
‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't say this, but at one time, I contemplated suicide. I felt that bad.’
Pinnacle refused an interview but stated in a release that over 80 per cent of village residents voted in October 2018 to implement a smoking ban across the entire village.
‘There were many conversations and correspondence, directly, with third party representatives and with family members to advise smoking was in breach of the community rules and requests that residents stop smoking on the premises,’ the statement said.
‘Despite the efforts of friends, neighbours, counsellors, legal representatives, the Residents Association and staff, the resident advised she would not stop smoking.’
‘By October 2022, we wrote to the resident formally advising her she was disrupting the quiet enjoyment of her neighbours and in breach of the community's rules regarding smoking.’
‘In early 2024, the resident moved out of the village by agreement,’ the statement continued.
Pinnacle listed Maurine's home for $1.1 million, promoting it as ‘the epitome of refined living’—more than twice the amount they paid her in May.
‘I would have been happy just to get back what I actually paid for it, but they didn't even pay that,’ Maurine lamented.
York expressed that she is not surprised by the development.
‘This is how they make their money,’ she said.
‘They want the residents to get out, and then they can resell the unit at a higher amount of money for the next person coming in.’
Retirement villages primarily generate revenue when residents depart, as they collect exit fees at that time.
For Maurine, the exit fees began at 2.5 per cent of the resale value, capping at 25 per cent after a decade, resulting in a fee of $122,500.
York noted that these exit fees incentivise retirement villages to push residents out once the maximum fee is reached.
‘For example, if a person was to live in a village for 10 years, and the exit fee was at its maximum after five years, the profit that the village is making isn't as much as if they could get two people there: five years and then five years,’ she explained.
At HAAG, York has witnessed various tactics employed by some retirement villages to cycle through residents.
‘Examples include questioning whether the person is able to live independently because, under the law, the villages can have someone leave if they are deemed to be unable to live independently,’ she said, also citing bullying.
In a survey conducted last year by the NSW Retirement Village Residents Association, 40 per cent of respondents from 120 villages reported experiencing some form of abuse, including harassment, intimidation, and patronisation—primarily from other residents but also from management.
Some residents described the bullying as so unbearable that it led to depression and thoughts of suicide. Many isolated themselves in their homes, resulting in a decline in their health.
There have also been numerous accounts from residents and their families sharing distressing stories about life in retirement villages.
Many have reported being left with so little that they cannot afford aged care rooms and are placed on waiting lists for government-subsidised placements.
Another resident, John Van Putten, continues to live in a retirement village and feels financially trapped.
After his divorce, he purchased a unit in Tudor Village in Lilydale, Melbourne's east, in 2021, as he approached retirement.
However, within two years, he began to regret his decision as he observed the increasing monthly maintenance fees for residents, which cover village management and the costs associated with communal facilities.
‘If they're [rising by] 23 per cent this year, what can they do next year and the year after and the year after?’ he questioned.
He stated that he didn't want ‘to get trapped in this snowball effect’, so he decided to move out and relocate to a rental property while his house was on the market.
Pinnacle kept charging maintenance fees, but he claims that after 10 months, the house still hadn't sold for the price he wanted, and the expenses were piling up.
‘I can't afford to pay rent on one property and also pay maintenance fees here as well, so I moved back in,’ he shared.
He said that the total expenses for refurbishing and staging the property to enhance its appeal to potential buyers, along with sales fees, rent, and maintenance costs, amounted to $30,000.
‘They're not actually there to look after older people. It's a money-making business,’ John remarked.
In another statement, Pinnacle said, ‘To suggest we somehow provoke residents to leave at any point in time of their residence for money is offensive.’
The Retirement Living Council (RLC), a lobby group for village operators and part of the Property Council, stated that the industry has been established for 60 years and has created ‘wonderful communities for a quarter-of-a-million older Australians living around the country right now’.
The ABC inquired with RLC Executive Director Daniel Gannon about whether the exit fee structure commonly implemented in the industry incentivises operators to remove residents from their villages.
‘Certainly not [in] my experience,’ he said.
‘Certainly not the feedback that I hear in the market.’
‘This sector, for a long time, was focused on real estate and property is transitioning to providing wellness, care and support services—that continuum of care from independence when people move in at the age of 75 right through into when people might need more home care, they might need more care and support services to help these older Australians age in place in a retirement village,’ Gannon added.
He then went on to say that ‘research now shows that compared to people not living in retirement villages, people can be 41 per cent happier, 15 per cent more physically active’.
He stated that the industry aims for retirement villages to be environments where people feel secure.
According to him, the average cost of a two-bedroom unit in a retirement village is 43 per cent lower than that of homes in the conventional housing market when compared to the median house price in the same area.
However, for residents like John, there is a pressing need for increased regulation and better protections for those living in retirement villages.
‘You can't get out of it once you're in it,’ Gannon warned.
‘There's no way out unless you're prepared to take a heavy financial loss.’
As the troubling situation at Pinnacle Living unfolds, it highlights a broader concern facing retirees in gated villages across Australia.
Many residents are grappling with financial nightmares and exploitative practices, raising alarms about the land lease model prevalent in these communities.
The experiences shared by those living in retirement villages reveal alarming trends that warrant attention, shedding light on the pressing need for reform and greater protection for seniors.
These revelations not only underline the individual struggles faced by residents like Maurine but also call into question the sustainability and ethics of the retirement living industry as a whole.
What are your thoughts on this issue? Have you or someone you know experienced an ordeal similar to Maurine’s and John’s? We’d love to hear your stories and insights in the comments below.
The golden years are often envisioned as a time of relaxation and comfort, a reward for a lifetime of hard work.
Retirement villages across Australia promise just that, with the allure of safety, community, and low-maintenance living.
However, for one Aussie senior, her experience at a retirement village was far from the peaceful retirement she had hoped for.
Instead, it became a source of profound distress, leading her to contemplate suicide.
Ninety-year-old Maurine Moore reached a point in her life at a retirement village in Melbourne where she considered suicide due to her difficult circumstances.
‘I felt that bad,’ she said, tearing up. ‘I was really worn out.’
Earlier this year, the retired child psychologist and volunteer, who struggles with mobility, packed up her antique furniture, boxed her extensive collection of books, and carefully packed her cherished Royal Doulton figurines before leaving the home she had lived in for 15 years.
Maurine Moore, a 90-year-old resident of a Pinnacle Living retirement village, faced what she termed ‘reckless harassment’ over her smoking, resulting in extreme stress and suicidal thoughts. Credit: Shutterstock
Maurine departed in March after Pinnacle Living, the owner of the retirement village in the tranquil Balwyn suburb, threatened to evict her in a letter sent just three days before Christmas.
Her violation? Consistently breaching a smoking ban that was implemented in 2019, a decade after her arrival, as a result of a residents' vote that declared the entire village smoke-free, including her home and courtyard.
‘I was 16 when I started and unfortunately became addicted,’ Maurine shared.
‘I did give up in 2018 with a great deal of help until the pressure started with the place I was living at…I just went back to it when the pressure got too much…and I'm ashamed of it.’
She described her treatment at the village over the past few years as ‘abominable’.
ABC Investigations and 7.30 have revealed alarming accounts of exorbitant fees and unfair contracts that older Australians have encountered when entering the multi-billion-dollar retirement village sector.
These include complicated and unclear agreements (some featuring algebraic formulas), price gouging, intimidation, and deceptive marketing claims.
Every year, thousands of retirees are attracted to retirement villages by the allure of safety, enjoyment, and low-maintenance living.
Over 250,000 residents inhabit more than 2,500 villages nationwide.
The industry's leading association claims that these homes are, on average, 43 per cent cheaper than the median house price in their respective postcodes, with residents reportedly 41 per cent happier.
However, Maurine described her experience as more akin to hell than a paradise.
Maurine noted that her relationship with the village began to decline in 2017 when she took Pinnacle to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) for not repairing her library room, which had flooded and damaged her books.
Although Pinnacle eventually agreed to address the issue, she felt that the dynamics shifted afterwards.
‘One manager always kept saying, “You are confused,” as if you had Alzheimer's,’ she recounted.
On one occasion, Maurine claims a staff member blocked her car while she was attempting to leave the village, smiling as he walked away for 15 minutes, causing her to be late for a doctor's appointment.
Then, in 2019, the village implemented a smoking ban.
Following that, she received numerous emails and visits to her unit, permitted under her contract, along with legal letters and demands for costly repairs that she couldn't afford. This was compounded by accusations of a ‘putrid stench’ coming from her home.
In a letter dated December 16, 2020, just before Christmas, Pinnacle outlined several breaches of her contract that needed to be resolved by January 27—a challenging deadline given the holiday shutdown.
Maurine was mortified by the claims made in the letter, including ‘a general state of uncleanliness’, which she firmly denies.
Pinnacle complained about ‘the presence of smoke stains over all surfaces, both within and outside of the apartment’.
The letter stated that she was required to dismantle the air conditioning and ‘remove and clean all mechanical systems, including the air conditioning cassette unit, exhaust fans, range hoods, ductwork, registers and controllers; remove and clean all power points and light switches’.
It also required that all fixtures and fittings, including furniture, soft furnishings, carpets, and underlay, be cleaned ‘in an attempt to remove the putrid stench within and permeating from the apartment’.
Additionally, it stipulated that by January 27, Maurine needed to ‘professionally repaint ceilings, doors and walls with undercoat including stain killers such as Zinsser B.I.N. and two coats of Dulux internal paint, matching the (pre) existing colours if surfaces are damaged from cleaning performed’.
‘The walls were not yellow, they were lying…there was nothing wrong with the place,’ Maurine argued.
Maurine, who has limited finances and struggles with mobility—using a stick to walk—does not have any immediate family to rely on for support.
Distressed by her situation, she reached out to the non-profit Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG) for assistance.
As the letters from Pinnacle kept arriving, HAAG worker Shane McGrath intervened, stating to the village, ‘This persistent and baseless harassment of my client must stop.’
‘The tone of your emails has been aggressive and hostile towards Maurine as if you think you can brute-force your way to whatever outcome you want, and you consistently appear more interested in causing her distress than in achieving any practical outcome,’ he stated in one 2021 email.
‘This can only be either deliberate or reckless harassment. Please stop. It is not helping you, and it is—as I have said—causing needless and severe distress to my client, a resident of the village you manage who is a frail, elderly woman.’
‘This is a moment where everyone can step back, take a breath, and figure out how to de-escalate and move forward together,’ McGrath added.
McGrath visited Maurine several times and noted that her unit was clean and well-maintained, contrary to claims of its poor condition.
Throughout 2021, Maurine, then 87, was hospitalised three times due to health issues. As the conflict continued, Pinnacle brought in lawyers to draft some of the correspondence.
In a letter to Pinnacle's lawyers in February 2022, McGrath pointed out that Maurine had been attempting to quit smoking for years.
‘She has been unable to, which she finds deeply embarrassing and shameful,’ the letter read.
‘She is also not mobile enough to leave the village every time she needs to smoke.’
‘There is no practical way she can comply with the demand that she stop smoking on site altogether, and she would not have moved into the village had such a rule existed at the time,’ it continued.
HAAG Head Fiona York described Maurine's case as one of the most severe she has encountered.
‘It's [the village is] built on a hill, so she can't walk out of the village to be able to smoke,’ she pointed out.
‘And as a lifelong smoker, it's really difficult [for her] to be able to stop.’
‘We tried to negotiate with the village to be able to find a reasonable way to resolve this.’
‘We proposed that there be an area where she was able to smoke that wouldn't impact on other residents, and we tried to negotiate with the village management.’
‘Unfortunately, they dug their heels in,’ Ms York added.
Pinnacle stated that any agreement would necessitate Maurine to construct a self-contained room in her courtyard ‘which does not permit smoke to emanate from outside of that area’.
This expense was too much for Maurine, who was already facing financial difficulties.
On February 28, 2022, she received a breach and termination notice requiring her to vacate her home by May 4.
HAAG sought an injunction from VCAT, which was approved, but the stress was becoming overwhelming for Maurine.
‘You're made to feel isolated, yes. And if you're the bad person, no one wants to associate with you, in case they start getting picked on,’ she lamented.
‘So, I started keeping myself away from the residents, although I will say most of the residents were very supportive.’
After enduring the anxiety of potential eviction, Maurine signed a deed of settlement and release in October 2023, legally committing not to smoke on the premises, which resolved the VCAT case.
However, just three days before Christmas, she was caught smoking again, prompting Pinnacle's lawyers to send a letter threatening that they ‘would seek orders for her to vacate the premises forthwith’ and to recover legal costs.
In January, while Maurine was still residing there, fellow residents received a four-page letter titled ‘Special Levy’ that detailed the ongoing smoking dispute, indirectly referring to her and stating that Pinnacle had incurred $92,000 in legal expenses to address the issue.
According to the letter, ‘costs are not provided for in the routine village budget’, which meant that each household would need to contribute a levy of nearly $2,200.
‘I think that was to turn the residents against me,’ she speculated.
By this point, Maurine was 90 years old and lacked the funds to continue battling the dispute, making the stress overwhelming for her.
‘I was so nervous and so upset, I was forced to give in,’ she said.
Maurine left the village under duress, signing a settlement deed that undervalued her property and denied her any capital gain despite significant appreciation in local property values during her residency. Credit: Shutterstock
She moved out in late March and is now renting in another retirement village in a peaceful Melbourne suburb, paying on a month-to-month basis.
In May, Pinnacle proposed to buy her home for the price she paid 15 years ago, $490,000, minus various fees, which would leave her with just $343,000, denying her any capital gains and resulting in a significant financial loss.
According to CoreLogic data, property prices in the suburb have surged over 150 per cent during the same period.
In its letter, the company claimed her home was in an ‘extremely poor state’ and would require over $100,000 in repairs, which they would waive if she accepted their offer.
The letter also noted that they couldn't specify how long it would take to repair, resell, and settle her property, citing a subdued market and it was ‘taking a long time to find new residents’.
‘Meanwhile, we continue to spend more in legal fees to assert our rights under the deed of settlement,’ the letter continued.
If she agreed to the offer, the company stated it would withdraw the legal action against her.
Maurine decided to accept the deal.
‘They have turned what could have been a pleasant old age into sheer hell,’ she remarked.
‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't say this, but at one time, I contemplated suicide. I felt that bad.’
Pinnacle refused an interview but stated in a release that over 80 per cent of village residents voted in October 2018 to implement a smoking ban across the entire village.
‘There were many conversations and correspondence, directly, with third party representatives and with family members to advise smoking was in breach of the community rules and requests that residents stop smoking on the premises,’ the statement said.
‘Despite the efforts of friends, neighbours, counsellors, legal representatives, the Residents Association and staff, the resident advised she would not stop smoking.’
‘By October 2022, we wrote to the resident formally advising her she was disrupting the quiet enjoyment of her neighbours and in breach of the community's rules regarding smoking.’
‘In early 2024, the resident moved out of the village by agreement,’ the statement continued.
Pinnacle listed Maurine's home for $1.1 million, promoting it as ‘the epitome of refined living’—more than twice the amount they paid her in May.
‘I would have been happy just to get back what I actually paid for it, but they didn't even pay that,’ Maurine lamented.
York expressed that she is not surprised by the development.
‘This is how they make their money,’ she said.
‘They want the residents to get out, and then they can resell the unit at a higher amount of money for the next person coming in.’
Retirement villages primarily generate revenue when residents depart, as they collect exit fees at that time.
For Maurine, the exit fees began at 2.5 per cent of the resale value, capping at 25 per cent after a decade, resulting in a fee of $122,500.
York noted that these exit fees incentivise retirement villages to push residents out once the maximum fee is reached.
‘For example, if a person was to live in a village for 10 years, and the exit fee was at its maximum after five years, the profit that the village is making isn't as much as if they could get two people there: five years and then five years,’ she explained.
At HAAG, York has witnessed various tactics employed by some retirement villages to cycle through residents.
‘Examples include questioning whether the person is able to live independently because, under the law, the villages can have someone leave if they are deemed to be unable to live independently,’ she said, also citing bullying.
In a survey conducted last year by the NSW Retirement Village Residents Association, 40 per cent of respondents from 120 villages reported experiencing some form of abuse, including harassment, intimidation, and patronisation—primarily from other residents but also from management.
Some residents described the bullying as so unbearable that it led to depression and thoughts of suicide. Many isolated themselves in their homes, resulting in a decline in their health.
There have also been numerous accounts from residents and their families sharing distressing stories about life in retirement villages.
Many have reported being left with so little that they cannot afford aged care rooms and are placed on waiting lists for government-subsidised placements.
The case raised concerns about the retirement village industry, including complex contracts, high exit fees that encourage resident turnover, and insufficient regulation to safeguard residents' interests. Credit: Shutterstock
Another resident, John Van Putten, continues to live in a retirement village and feels financially trapped.
After his divorce, he purchased a unit in Tudor Village in Lilydale, Melbourne's east, in 2021, as he approached retirement.
However, within two years, he began to regret his decision as he observed the increasing monthly maintenance fees for residents, which cover village management and the costs associated with communal facilities.
‘If they're [rising by] 23 per cent this year, what can they do next year and the year after and the year after?’ he questioned.
He stated that he didn't want ‘to get trapped in this snowball effect’, so he decided to move out and relocate to a rental property while his house was on the market.
Pinnacle kept charging maintenance fees, but he claims that after 10 months, the house still hadn't sold for the price he wanted, and the expenses were piling up.
‘I can't afford to pay rent on one property and also pay maintenance fees here as well, so I moved back in,’ he shared.
He said that the total expenses for refurbishing and staging the property to enhance its appeal to potential buyers, along with sales fees, rent, and maintenance costs, amounted to $30,000.
‘They're not actually there to look after older people. It's a money-making business,’ John remarked.
In another statement, Pinnacle said, ‘To suggest we somehow provoke residents to leave at any point in time of their residence for money is offensive.’
The Retirement Living Council (RLC), a lobby group for village operators and part of the Property Council, stated that the industry has been established for 60 years and has created ‘wonderful communities for a quarter-of-a-million older Australians living around the country right now’.
The ABC inquired with RLC Executive Director Daniel Gannon about whether the exit fee structure commonly implemented in the industry incentivises operators to remove residents from their villages.
‘Certainly not [in] my experience,’ he said.
‘Certainly not the feedback that I hear in the market.’
‘This sector, for a long time, was focused on real estate and property is transitioning to providing wellness, care and support services—that continuum of care from independence when people move in at the age of 75 right through into when people might need more home care, they might need more care and support services to help these older Australians age in place in a retirement village,’ Gannon added.
He then went on to say that ‘research now shows that compared to people not living in retirement villages, people can be 41 per cent happier, 15 per cent more physically active’.
He stated that the industry aims for retirement villages to be environments where people feel secure.
According to him, the average cost of a two-bedroom unit in a retirement village is 43 per cent lower than that of homes in the conventional housing market when compared to the median house price in the same area.
However, for residents like John, there is a pressing need for increased regulation and better protections for those living in retirement villages.
‘You can't get out of it once you're in it,’ Gannon warned.
‘There's no way out unless you're prepared to take a heavy financial loss.’
As the troubling situation at Pinnacle Living unfolds, it highlights a broader concern facing retirees in gated villages across Australia.
Many residents are grappling with financial nightmares and exploitative practices, raising alarms about the land lease model prevalent in these communities.
The experiences shared by those living in retirement villages reveal alarming trends that warrant attention, shedding light on the pressing need for reform and greater protection for seniors.
These revelations not only underline the individual struggles faced by residents like Maurine but also call into question the sustainability and ethics of the retirement living industry as a whole.
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