In our December/January issue, I used my “Editor’s Note” to tell you about how my mother, Elaine Benz, was evicted from her senior living facility at age ninety-seven. I noted that she was not allowed to return after a brief stay at another facility, forcing my family to scramble to find a new place for her to live. And I promised you an “update” on the situation in this issue.
Multiple sources told me that evictions often occur when a resident gets sent to the hospital, sometimes at the facility’s instigation, as happened with my mom.
That update ended up being the article we present here, “ ‘I Want to Go Home.’ ” At more than 8,500 words, it is perhaps the longest article in The Progressive’s 113-year history, and certainly in recent years. It became a big story when I found out, quite unexpectedly, that the eviction of elderly people from their nursing homes and senior living facilities is a huge national problem.
In mid-November, as the drama involving my mom was playing out, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services put out a major report on “facility-initiated discharges,” or forced evictions, in long-term care facilities. It noted that “discharge/eviction” has for years been the single most frequent complaint recorded by the federal Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, which works to resolve problems in these facilities.
In one case cited in the report, “police found one resident on the streets after a nursing home discharged him to an unlicensed boarding house without notifying his family.” I spoke to an attorney in Michigan who said her group has seen cases in which elderly residents were approved for discharges to a homeless shelter and to a house that had burned down. Multiple sources told me that evictions often occur when a resident gets sent to the hospital, sometimes at the facility’s instigation, as happened with my mom.
Elaine on Christmas with Diane, Bill, and Rick.
In 2019, there were more than 13,000 discharge-related complaints received by ombudsmen nationally, and available numbers suggest that the problem is on the rise. The reason for this, advocates agree, is that there are seldom any negative consequences for facilities that evict elderly residents, even when they do so in ways that clearly violate the law—either at the federal level for nursing homes or at the state level for other kinds of facilities.
“The benefits of breaking the law are greater than the cost of breaking the law,” says Tony Chicotel of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “So, consequently, you get a lot of law breaking.”
Whether or not there will be consequences for the provider in my mom’s case is still an open question, along with the question of whether or not these consequences will be tough enough to deter future evictions. As the Inspector General’s report noted, a number of state ombudsmen “opined that stronger enforcement actions could help to reduce these discharges.”
Or, as Chicotel puts it, “Anytime there’s an inappropriate transfer discharge that either the federal government or state government finds out about, there should be significant financial penalties for that.”
The first step in that direction is making people aware of the problem, as we have tried to do here. We hope our readers will spread the word about this article, which can be read and shared at progressive.org/magazine/evictingelderly-lueders. A downloadable pdf version of the story is also available at progressive.org/evicting. Both of these versions include links to referenced reports, letters, and other supporting documentation.
Meanwhile, my family and I will keep trying to secure justice for my mom. In our next issue of the magazine, I’ll have another update.
With this issue, we bid farewell to Kerstin Vogdes Diehn, our longtime art director. Though Kerstin was technically a contractor, for whom The Progressive was one of several clients, she was in fact a member of our family. Kerstin led us through several redesigns of both the magazine and of our website, and her conscientious attention to detail was a good match for our perfectionism. We wish her well as she takes on digital design roles for new clients. And we send our deep gratitude to Susan Webb for laying out this issue.
As always, we ask that you help us to raise awareness of The Progressive, passing it on to friends, buying gift subscriptions, and talking us up. The wider our reach, the more of a difference we can make toward our goal of building a better world.
Bill Lueders
Editor