By Judith Graham JUNE
26, 2020
Davetta
Brooks, 75, who has heart failure, a fractured hip and macular degeneration, is
afraid. Conditions in her low-income senior building on Chicago’s Near West
Side — the Congressman George W. Collins Apartments — are “deplorable,” she
said.
Residents
are not wearing masks or gloves to guard against the coronavirus, she said:
“They’re touching everything on the elevator, in the laundry room. And anybody
and everybody’s relatives and friends are coming in and out with no scrutiny.”
No one
is checking on residents to see if they need help, Brooks said. And no one
seems to know whether residents have tested positive for COVID-19 or died,
though ambulances have screeched up to the entrance several times.
“This
building is not safe,” she said in mid-June. “With all the things happening in
the U.S., this is what ‘seniors lives don’t matter’ looks like.”
Nationwide,
more than 1.6 million older adults live in low-income housing subsidized by the
Department of Housing and Urban Development — most in apartment buildings with
shared common spaces, elevators, staircases, mailrooms, hallways and laundry
rooms where the coronavirus might lurk.
Most of
these seniors have endured a life of disadvantage, have chronic illnesses such
as diabetes and heart disease, and lack financial reserves to draw upon.
Yet in
the midst of the pandemic, this population — the age group deemed most at risk
of becoming critically ill and dying — has largely been overlooked.
“This
is a moment when we really should be pushing assistance and guidance toward
these senior communities, but we’re not,” said Linda Couch, vice president of
housing for LeadingAge, an association that represents nonprofit senior housing
and long-term care providers. “No one is watching over what’s happening.”
Nationally
there is no data on COVID-19’s spread in low-income housing. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention is not collecting it or requiring states to do
so. The same is true of HUD and state and local housing agencies: This is
“independent living,” and operators are not expected to monitor the health of
residents.
Low-income
housing operators find out about COVID cases only when residents or family
members volunteer the information. For the most part, systematic testing is not
done. A rare exception: Gov. Andrew Cuomo in mid-May announced plans to bring
coronavirus testing to 40 public housing developments in
New York.
“Without
testing, there’s no way of knowing how many people have the virus,” said
Michael Kane, executive director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants. “Our
concern is that there could be a transmission danger similar to what’s going on
in nursing homes or assisted living.”
“People
are dying all over in these buildings, and we don’t know what they’re dying
from,” said Geraldine Collins, president of the National Alliance of HUD
Tenants.
The
situation in Chicago highlights how difficult it is to gauge the extent to
which people in these settings are at risk. Although the Chicago health
department requires “congregate living facilities,” including
senior housing complexes, to report two or more confirmed COVID cases that
occur within 14 days, it has not made that data publicly available. So there is
no way of tracking where the virus is spreading.
The
Chicago Housing Authority, which operates 55 buildings with 9,500 senior
residents, “is not required to track or verify cases and, due to privacy issues,
we do not inquire about the health status of residents,” the agency said in a
statement.
At the
federal level, HUD’s emergency preparedness plans did not incorporate
infectious disease control and its guidance to housing operators was spotty in
the pandemic’s early stages. Building managers were not required to notify
residents of a COVID case.
Recently,
HUD has come out more strongly on the side of transparency. On May 21, HUD said that
multifamily housing management should, “in coordination with local health
officials, communicate the possible COVID-19 exposure to all residents and
workers, volunteers and visitors.”
On
health concerns, HUD has deferred to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, which in March issued recommendations for
preventing the spread of COVID-19 in retirement communities and independent
living facilities.
Those
include canceling group activities; informing residents, workers and visitors
about COVID-19; stepping up cleaning and disinfecting; screening people coming
into buildings; and limiting visitors.
Very
little of that was happening in Chicago buildings for low-income seniors,
according to Lori Clark, executive director of the Jane Addams Senior Caucus,
which has close to 700 members.
When
the organization called members in mid-March, “we started to hear awful
stories,” Clark said. Residents reported getting no information about how to
stay safe. No one was checking who was going in and out. Buildings were
understaffed as workers stayed home.
At the
Elizabeth Woods Apartments, a senior building operated by the Chicago Housing
Authority, “we felt abandoned,” said Carmen Betances, 68. “They did no
cleaning, and they did not prepare the property for the invisible enemy that
has now taken over. They gave us no information about what to do.”
“I am a
target for coronavirus: I am a senior. I’m asthmatic. I have a compromised
immune system,” Betances said. “Every breath I take, I take with fear, worrying
that I could die from this invisible monster.”
At the
end of March, Betances and other residents began using their own cleaning
supplies to disinfect the handles of every door in the six-story apartment
building twice a day. They wiped down water fountains, counters in the lobby,
chairs and tables in the community room as well as vending and laundry
machines.
On May
20, the housing authority said in a statement it is making more than 3,000
calls daily to check in on older residents, requiring property management firms
to clean and disinfect common areas three times a day, and distributing
information about Chicago’s six new coronavirus testing sites.
The
complex where Brooks lives is privately operated. Its operations were taken
over April 1 by WinnResidential, the nation’s largest manager of affordable
housing.
“The
immediate priority during this transition has been to protect the health and
safety of the residents,” wrote Ed Cafasso, senior vice president of
WinnCompanies, which owns WinnResidential. He said the complex was now being
cleaned several times a day.
Cafasso
said the company has helped tens of thousands of older residents at 520
properties obtain meals, groceries, household supplies and masks; renew
prescriptions; and access telehealth.
Food
assistance is a pressing need, because people cannot get hot meals at community
centers and many are afraid to go to grocery stores.
Also
needed: help using technology, and better internet connections so seniors can
participate in telehealth and virtual interactions with friends and family,
easing their loneliness as stay-at-home orders remain in place. Most federally
subsidized senior housing lacks building-wide Wi-Fi.
Going
into the pandemic, some housing operators were better equipped to respond. In
and around New York City, Selfhelp Community Services runs 11 low-income senior
buildings with 1,400 residents. Social workers have identified vulnerable
residents at the buildings and have stayed in contact with them, said Mohini
Mishra, a management director.
“If
someone is coming home from the hospital, we try to check in with family
members,” Mishra said. “Will they need home care? Do they understand what
self-quarantine means?”
Across
seven of Selfhelp’s buildings, there had been 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19
among residents and 12 people had died as of June 10.
At the
Paul G. Stewart Center apartments in Chicago, officials called in the police
after the first resident found to have COVID-19 in mid-March refused to stay in
their apartment.
“We
reiterated the guidelines of the CDC and the Chicago and Illinois health
department[s],” said Shawn Person, chief operations officer of the South Side
campus, which houses about 1,300 residents. “But this person refused to listen.
We had to do something.” As of June 10, she said, 10 residents had tested
positive and two had passed away.
The
complex is participating in a federal pilot project that brings nurses into
senior housing to help evaluate residents’ needs.
But
there’s only so much they can do. “There’s a store in this building, and nobody
practices true social distancing there,” said Shirley Moore, 71, who lives in
an apartment tower on the campus, has COVID-19 and is not sure how she became
infected.
Her
72-year-old husband has a much worse case of COVID-19 than she does, she said.
He had been in intensive care for three weeks as of June 10, including eight
days on a ventilator, she said, and early on doctors told her they did not
think he would survive.
“You go
up in the elevators, you’re bringing garbage to the garbage chute, you’re
grabbing a guardrail in the hall,” she said. “Even if there’s been cleaning,
people still will be touching all these places in between.”
As for
what she would like to see happen, Moore said, “I think they should be testing.
I’m sure if you tested everyone in this building, you’d come up with a lot of
COVID-19.”
Judith
Graham: khn.navigatingaging@gmail.com, @judith_graham
No comments:
Post a Comment