A few years ago, I visited my friend, Ed, in a nursing home. Ed didn’t want to be in the nursing home, but because he recently started using a wheelchair, he had nowhere else to go.
Even though I’m old enough to move into one of those places, none of the residents look anything like me. That’s because there are no residents like me.
Ed had just been released from a brief stay in a hospital, but when he tried to return to his apartment at an assisted living facility, he was told he couldn’t because he used a wheelchair and needed too much physical assistance with daily living activities. Ed really wanted to go back, but the staff packed his belongings and someone else moved into his place.
I thought about Ed after reading Bill Lueders’s cover story in the February/March print edition of The Progressive. It’s an infuriating account about how his mother and other seniors are illegally evicted from independent living facilities, nursing homes, and other congregate living settings when they, too, aren’t allowed to return after going to the hospital.
When I consider whether what happened to Ed might happen to me, I shake my head and laugh. I own a condo in a twenty-two-story building near downtown Chicago. I use a motorized wheelchair and employ a crew of people to assist me with things like getting in and out of bed. I have a crew member with me for about ten hours each day. I hire whomever I want to work for me and their wages are paid through a state program.
Suppose the condo board or building manager tried to tell me that I couldn’t live there anymore because I need too much assistance. That would be a laughably blatant violation of multiple housing anti-discrimination laws.
I also laugh when I see a television commercial for a senior living community. The blissful residents are all in peak physical condition. They’re playing golf and riding horses.
I laugh because even though I’m old enough to move into one of those places, none of the residents look anything like me. That’s because there are no residents like me. If I applied to move into a community like that, they would probably turn me down because I’m too disabled and need too much assistance. Or if a resident becomes disabled and in need of more assistance, they may well be required to move into a smaller residence or completely out of the community.
This is what happens in settings where people don’t have control over their living situations. Even though this kind of displacement is illegal, reluctant enforcement entities can’t be counted upon to make things right, as Lueders points out.
The solution is to create and fortify new and existing resources, such as the program that serves me, that truly put disabled people in charge of their own lives.