A loophole in California’s law means senior citizen housing facilities don’t have to give notice to residents when owners are facing foreclosure, according to a New York Times article. This can cause an undue burden on patients and loved ones, especially those who require the most amount of care.
The article reports about an appalling scene where the Sheriff’s office showed up to execute an eviction notice at a board-and-care home for the elderly and found several bedridden patients and their distressed loved ones still trying to make last-minute transfer arrangements to other facilities. It appeared no one had given them notice.
“We got a call from Adult Protective Services letting us know that the house we were evicting had four or five bedridden residents, and the guy was ignoring the eviction notice,” the Sheriff’s Sergeant recalled. “I couldn’t believe it had gone this far.”
While there’s no way of knowing how many times this scene has played out, the newspaper’s research revealed that over 100 elder-care homes went through foreclosure in the San Francisco Bay Area during the six-month period from October 2009 to April 2010, which may have resulted in the eviction of some 700 residents, many of whom require help with basic daily living activities, and some of whom received no notification.
Transfer trauma refers to the stress experienced, both physically and mentally, by patients who have to be relocated. Research has shown that the severity of transfer trauma varies with the type of transfer, the mental and physical frailty of the patient, and their readiness for relocation.
California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR), a non-profit organization advocating for quality of life issues of California’s long-term care population, cosponsored legislation that would have required residents be given notice long before evictions could be carried out on unwitting patients and their loved ones. Among other things, the bill called for:
- Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFE) to give notice to all residents and their loved ones of any foreclosure proceedings as they are initiated.
- RCFE operators to notify the Department of Social Services of certain events that would indicate institutional financial distress, and which could threaten the housing security of the residents. Included events could range from a utility disconnect notice to the initiation of foreclosure proceedings.
- Procedures to protect residents from transfer trauma when their home is being foreclosed.
Although the bill passed both chambers of the state congress, it met its doom at the governor’s desk. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, citing its creation of “a new unfunded workload” and that it would “redirect scarce resources that are currently dedicated to immediate health and safety issues.”
{ 0 comments }
