Senior Assisted Living Facility: To Be Or Not To Be?

In October of 2007, voters approved the concept of leasing four acres of the Truman Waterfront for use as a senior citizens assisted living and independent living facility.  Actually, 63% of voters agreed with the plan.  Key West’s population is getting older.  ‘Baby Boomers’ are retiring, they want assisted living facilities, they have all the cash and chances are they will get what they want.

So what is all this fuss and suspicion about?  “It mystifies me,” says Sheldon Davidson, a board member of the Florida Keys Assisted Care Coalition (FKACC), “there is no assisted care in the lower Keys.  I don’t understand why people would reject this golden opportunity.”  The “opportunity” is a proposal presented to the City by developer Jeff Sharkey of Wendover Housing LLC to create up to 50 units of senior independent living housing for persons over 55 (10% of those would be at ‘market’ rate with the other 90% at different levels of ‘affordable’) and another 60 units of assisted living (25 at ‘affordable’ rates and the other 35 at ‘market’ rate).

At first glance it doesn’t look like such a bad deal.  But opponents to the lease don’t agree.  “The biggest misrepresentation,” says Christine Russell, who has been following this issue for years, “is that you are going to be able to ‘age in place’ in Key West at this assisted living facility, when in fact, you may get discharged as soon as you get sick.”

In her article, “Ten Things Your Assisted Living Facility Won’t Tell You,” Stacey L Bradford notes,

“The biggest misconception consumers have about assisted living is that once their loved one is accepted into one of these facilities, he or she will live there for a very long time perhaps avoiding a nursing home altogether.   But nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact the average resident stays only two years.  Why?  The assisted-living business model was never intended to provide care for frail and sickly seniors.  When they get that way as they inevitably do many will insist that they leave.”

At least in some measure, it seems that some of the most dedicated advocates for the assisted living facility in Key West are setting themselves up for disappointment.  Sandy Higgs, board coordinator for the FKACC, communicated a list of services she believes would be provided at the facility.

Higgs wrote:

“Assisted living can provide assistance with many activities of daily living and incidental activities of daily living, including but not limited to the following:

Assistance with medications

Assistance with bathing and dressing

Provision of nutritionally balanced meals in a social setting

Assistance with medical appointments and visits

Transportation

Social and intellectual engagement

Assistance with toileting

Housekeeping services

In short, assisted living services seek to assist frail elders with their everyday lives, so that they can enjoy a quality of life not possible for the frail person living alone and isolated.”

However the proposed lease agreement requires only the minimum services required for licensing.  Florida Statute 429.02(5) defines Assisted Living Facility as “any building… which undertakes to provide housing, meals, and one or more personal services for a period exceeding 24 hours…”  Under Florida Administrative Code 58A.5.0181(4)9a, with few exceptions, residents may not be retained in the facility if they are bedridden for more than 7 days.

Sandy Higgs’ list of services is well thought out, but there is no guarantee they will be provided.  The list includes many more services than the minimum required by Florida Statute:  (and therefore the lease agreement which simply points to the statutory definiton): “meals and one or more personal services”.  Maybe Ms. Higgs’ list should be included in the lease agreement.

“And then there is the fact that the proposed assisted living component is not affordable for most retired people,” says Russell,

“It will cost $2,900/month for the cheaper units.  I understand this is not socialism.  We don’t have to provide retirement homes for everyone, but neither do we have to give a for-profit company our prime waterfront property for 99 years at a nominal fee.”

The financials seem to be one of the biggest hang-ups at this point.   City Attorney Shawn Smith pointed out that no one on the City’s staff has the expertise to really review the numbers.  He believes it would be beneficial to hire a truly independent expert to study the financials before signing any lease.

On the financial front the make or break issue seems to be the so-called “developer fee.”   Jeff Sharkey of Wendover Housing Partners, LLC (the developer) wants almost $2.3 Million for his company’s services, but Lopez, Johnston, and Yaniz are steadfast against it.

Obviously there are a lot of questions for a financial expert. Smith pointed out during Tuesday night’s Commission meeting that the developer has been changing some of the base values.   One also wonders why the facility proposed by Sharkey is going to cost $30 Million when the previous developer, Rick Dover of Family Pride, had projected around $17.5 Million only two years ago.

When you tell Russell that hopefully the more profitable assisted living facility will help finance the independent portion (which has rental rates beginning at $321), she still thinks there’s something sketchy about the deal which leads us to shine a light on the elephant in the room:  Key West’s past history of “sweetheart leases” and the fact that for many years powerful people in town have played monopoly with public land as though it were their own.

One of those infamous leases entered the spotlight about two years ago when Key Westers learned that the Pier House had been renting about 1/3 acre of land from the City for 40 years for only $300/month.  Such dealings are not reassuring and of course it doesn’t help that some of the very same people pushing for this 99 year well-below-market lease of the Truman Waterfront property are members of the Key West Yacht Club which also has a $1/year lease that is not set to expire until 2060.

In other words, the City of Key West has a rather loaded history of seriously questionable land deals.  Trying to defend the City’s record, Commissioner Weekly explained those deals were done 50 or more years ago.  “There is a lot more sophistication and people are understanding how inappropriate some of those leases were,” Weekly stated back in March of last year, “a lot of them were done back in the 1960’s.  A lot of us on the commission were in high school or grade school.”

But here we are in 2013 and 3.2 acres of the City’s most valuable real estate is being offered to Sharkey’s Wendover Housing for $5,000/year.

“Why use prime waterfront property for something that will generate no revenue when it can be built somewhere else?” argues Commissioner Yaniz,

“Contrary to what we hear in the ongoing misinformation campaign, the City owns a Senior Housing Facility on Kennedy Drive that could be expanded to include this very proposal.”

City Planner Don Craig revealed during Tuesday night’s Commission meeting that he had taken measurements at the Kennedy Drive site and that putting the 110 units there was feasible.  “In other words,” says Yaniz, “we can move the operation over to Kennedy Drive instead of building it at the Truman waterfront.”

Hopefully, one way or another, the Commission will ‘take the bull by the horns’, breathe a little transparency into the process, lift the cloud of suspicion which poisons the air, crunch the numbers and bring our senior citizens an opportunity to retire peacefully in their City.