• Land Grab Main
• SEIU Deceived Voters … and Its Members
• Who Financed the "No on Prop. D" Campaign
• The $562,800 "Senior Housing Plan" for LHH's Campus
• People Affected if the West Residence Isn't Built
• Minutes of the “Assisted Lviing Project Workgroup" and the “Transition Steering Committee"
• Vote "No" on Future Bond Measures

People Affected if the West Residence Tower Isn’t Built As Planned

Make no mistake: Mayor Gavin “Care-Not-Cash” Newsom and his supporters are involved in a not-so-secret “land grab” to replace LHH’s skilled nursing beds with “supportive housing,” and it will affect those who currently call Laguna Honda Hospital their home.

One issue (beyond ongoing patient and staff safety issues) facing LHH is the potential that 420 residents will be displaced as the hospital changes its mission and focus by converting from the “medical model” to the “social-residential model” (which is different from another concept called “social-rehabilitation”) of care, with the goal of supplying “housing” rather than healthcare.  Note that the term “social-residential,” involves housing opportunities.

If the West Residence planned for 420 beds — which is currently on hold awaiting a “policy decision” by the Health Commission, Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Newsom — is not built, 180 beds for residents with chronic and complex progressive illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, MS, and Parkinson’s will be eliminated, along with 60 “Asian Focus” beds, and 80 beds for patients with psychosocial issues who also have medical conditions like Alzheimer’s, MS, and Parkinson’s.  In its place, senior housing apartments may replace the beds for patients with chronic and complex medical needs.

During the October 26 Citizens’ General Obligation Bond Oversight Committee meeting at City Hall, City Controller Ed Harrington noted that the hope is that the LHH campus may end up including an equal number of assisted (AL) beds as skilled nursing facility (SNF) beds. Harrington artfully did not tell the CGOBOC members during their meeting that a decision may already have been made to change the AL beds to supportive housing beds in an effort to end homelessness in the City.

By June 19 — just 13 days after the June 6 election — a unilateral decision (without real community input) had already been made to change plans for licensed assisted living units at LHH to unlicensed “permanent supportive housing apartments” for those over 18.  If the “senior housing plan” study currently underway concludes with a recommendation to place supportive housing on the site of where the West Residence tower was planned to be built, 420 skilled nursing beds will be replaced with somewhere between 140 and 780 supportive housing units, perhaps ranging from fully-assisted to fully-independent senior housing apartments, that will be built instead.

Current plans have approved 780 SNF beds; another 780 Assisted living or supportive housing beds would potentially bring the total number of beds to 1,560 ... quite close to 1,600 beds, an increase of nearly one-quarter more than the 1,340 (1,200 SNF + 140 AL) beds voters were led to believe in 1999 would be built at LHH.

Minutes of various committees reveal the direction the Newsom Administration is taking. The June 19, 2006 minutes of the LHH Assisted Living Project indicate that the Department of Public Health has decided that rather than licensed AL beds, a decision has been made to put in unlicensed “supportive housing” instead. Supportive housing is a buzz word for housing for the homeless, with support services in place.

Just as the Plaza Apartments at 6th and Howard were converted by the Newsom Administration at the very last minute from “low-income housing” to “supportive housing” (depriving low-income people from a housing complex initially designed to help ease their housing needs), the Newsom administration is changing plans at the last minute.  The Newsom administration plans involve not building part of a skilled nursing facility voters had approved in 1999 in order to use bond financing intended for a nursing facility to build “housing” on the LHH campus, instead.  If they succeed in forming a public-private partnership to grab Laguna Honda’s land in order to build supportive housing for the chronically homeless, 420 residents of Laguna Honda Hospital will lose access to skilled medical and skilled nursing long-term care.

If the West Residence is eliminated and replaced with fully-independent ”senior housing apartments," 420 people — including the 180 with “complex medical/rehabilitative care” needs — will be dislocated. The other 240 people facing dislocation include a 60-bed Asian focus ward which will be eliminated, and 180 beds for psychosocial residents who may also have multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, and other skilled nursing and medical needs.

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Copyright (c) 2006 by Committee to Save LHH.  All rights reserved.  This work may not be reposted anywhere on the Web, or reprinted in any print media, without express written permission.  E-mail the Committee to Save LHH.