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   AARP Sues To Stop Illegal Evictions From Nursing Homes : Shots - Health
   News Gloria and Bill Single lived together in a nursing home until she
   was evicted without warning. Complaints about illegal evictions from
   nursing homes are up 73 percent in California since 2011.

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AARP Foundation Sues Nursing Home To Stop Illegal Evictions

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   AARP Foundation Sues Nursing Home To Stop Illegal Evictions 3:55

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AARP Foundation Sues Nursing Home To Stop Illegal Evictions

AARP Foundation Sues Nursing Home To Stop Illegal Evictions

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   November 13, 20176:20 PM ET
   Heard on All Things Considered
   Ina Jaffe 2010

   Ina Jaffe
   Twitter
   Enlarge this image

   Gloria Single and her husband Bill Single in the dining hall of the
   skilled nursing floor at Pioneer House nursing home in Sacramento. AARP
   Foundation attorneys say California needs to more tightly enforce laws
   that prohibit evictions of the sort that separated the Singles, and
   sped up her physical decline. Aubrey Jones hide caption
   toggle caption
   Aubrey Jones

   Gloria Single and her husband Bill Single in the dining hall of the
   skilled nursing floor at Pioneer House nursing home in Sacramento. AARP
   Foundation attorneys say California needs to more tightly enforce laws
   that prohibit evictions of the sort that separated the Singles, and
   sped up her physical decline.
   Aubrey Jones

   A California judge could decide Tuesday if Gloria Single will be
   reunited with her husband, Bill. She's 83 years old. He's 93. The two
   have been married for 30 years. They lived in the same nursing home
   until last March, when Gloria Single was evicted without warning.

   Her situation isn't unique. Nationwide, eviction is the leading
   complaint about nursing homes. In California last year, more than 1,500
   nursing home residents complained that they were discharged
   involuntarily. That's an increase of 73 percent since 2011.
   As Nursing Homes Evict Patients, States Question Motives

Shots - Health News

As Nursing Homes Evict Patients, States Question Motives

   Gloria Single has a number of ailments. One of them is Alzheimer's
   disease. So when her son Aubrey Jones comes to visit her in her new
   nursing home, he brings old photos to show her. She can still recognize
   faces from long ago — one picture shows her three sons when they were
   just little kids.

   Jones says the photograph makes him and his brothers look like real
   troublemakers. "You are troublemakers," his mom teases.

   Jones also shows his mother a more recent photo. It was taken at
   Pioneer House, the nursing home where Gloria Single and her husband
   Bill lived together before her eviction. They're gazing into each
   other's eyes and smiling.

   When Jones tells her he loves that photo, Gloria Single slyly replies
   that's "because [Bill's] got his hand on my knee."

   In court documents, Pioneer House paints a more troubling picture of
   Gloria Single. They say that she became aggressive with staff and threw
   some plastic tableware. So Pioneer House called an ambulance and sent
   her to a hospital for a psychological evaluation. The hospital found
   nothing wrong with her, but the nursing home wouldn't take her back.
   They said they couldn't care for someone with her needs.

   Jones protested his mother's eviction to the California Department of
   Health Care Services. The department held a hearing. Jones won.

   "I expected action — definitely expected action," says Jones.

   Instead, he got an email explaining that the department that holds the
   hearings has no authority to enforce its own rulings. Enforcement is
   handled by a different state agency. He could start over with them.

   This Catch-22 situation attracted the interest of the legal wing of the
   AARP Foundation. Last year, attorneys there asked the federal
   government to open a civil rights investigation into the way California
   deals with nursing home evictions. Now, they're suing Pioneer House and
   its parent company on Gloria Single's behalf. It's the first time the
   AARP has taken a legal case dealing with nursing home eviction.

   "We certainly hope we can get Mrs. Single some relief," says William
   Alvarado Rivera, the foundation's senior vice president for litigation.
   "But we also hope that there is a lesson to be learned by facilities —
   that there will be accountability for their failure to respect the due
   process rights of their residents."

   Nursing home residents have a lot of rights guaranteed in state and
   federal law. For example, they have to be given 30 days' notice before
   they're moved involuntarily. And the nursing home has to hold their bed
   for a week if they're in the hospital.

   Rivera says Gloria Single didn't get any of that. As a result, she was
   stuck in the hospital for four and a half months before being accepted
   by another facility. During that time Single received none of the
   services and activities she would have had in a nursing home. She lost
   her ability to walk and now relies on a wheelchair.
   Under Trump Rule, Nursing Home Residents May Not Be Able To Sue After
   Abuse

Politics

Under Trump Rule, Nursing Home Residents May Not Be Able To Sue After Abuse

   Rivera says that "in the absence of state enforcement, it will depend
   on individuals like Mrs. Single having to advocate for themselves to
   get their rights respected and enforced."

   Fourteen years of public records obtained by NPR show that nursing
   homes rarely pay a price for illegally evicting residents. Just 7
   percent of nursing homes that were found to have violated the law in
   California were fined by the state. With just a couple of exceptions,
   the highest fines assessed were $2,000. The majority were $1,000 or
   less — and most fines were never paid in full.

   Diana Dooley, California's secretary of health and human services,
   declined NPR's request for an interview, citing pending litigation
   against the state on a similar issue.

   Frustration with the lack of state enforcement led the California
   Long-Term Care Ombudsman Association to join the Single lawsuit as a
   co-plaintiff. The organization represents long-term-care ombudsmen.
   Those are the public officials who track complaints about nursing homes
   and advocate for residents. But Leza Coleman, the group's executive
   director, says the spike in complaints about evictions is so
   overwhelming, that it's "impacting our ability to handle other
   complaints."

   Coleman believes another reason that eviction complaints are going up,
   is that the number of nursing homes is going down. State records show
   there are about 2,300 fewer beds in California than there were six
   years ago.

   "Those residents that are more challenging — those that have to be
   repositioned often, those that don't want to sit quietly and watch
   television — ... they're more expensive," she says. "They can be very
   taxing on the staff of a facility, and if a facility has one bed and
   two people looking at it, they're going to take the person that's
   easier to care for."

   But eviction complaints need to be seen in a different context, says
   Jim Gomez, CEO of the California Association of Health Facilities. "We
   have a very low rate of complaints regarding discharge," he says,
   adding that roughly 1,500 complaints is "less than a half of 1 percent
   of some 300,000 discharges" a year.

   And when residents are involuntarily discharged, Gomez says, "it's for
   the safety of staff and other residents.

   "We've had many attacks on residents and staff," he says. "Are you
   going to allow that person back to the facility?"

   Pioneer House and its parent corporation, the Retirement Housing
   Foundation, declined to be interviewed for this story. They sent a
   written statement which says, in part, "We intend to vigorously defend
   the allegation set forth in the lawsuit."

   Meanwhile, Aubrey Jones says the lawsuit is not just about his mother
   any more.

   "If anything," he says, "I want the dial to be turned a little bit so
   this thing doesn't happen again —[so] it's less likely to happen to
   someone else."

   Most of all, Jones says, he wants to see his mother and stepfather
   reunited, so they can be together for the little bit of time they have
   left.
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   Shots is the online channel for health stories from the NPR Science
   Desk. We report on news that can make a difference for your health and
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   health. Your hosts are Scott Hensley and Nancy Shute. You can reach the
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