Affordable Housing Needs More Government Subsidies
by Richard Kuehn on 05/10/23
Burbank, CA Speaking at the C4A Conference 2023: Mapping the
Future of Aging and Disability in California, held here May 9-11, panelists on
the “Aging In Community: The Affordable Housing Crisis that No One is Talking
About” panel lamented the lack of government incentives to build affordable
housing.
Cherly Brown, Chair, California Commission on Aging and
Former Assembly Member said, “Someday you’re going to get old. There are an increasing number at risk of
being homeless.” She pointed to the high
poverty level of seniors in California.
She said that the poverty levels of seniors, paired with a and
lack of assets (seniors have an average of $54K in assets, which is the median
cost of just one year of living in an assisted living facility).
https://www.seniorliving.org/assisted-living/costs/
Meea Kang, SVP Development at Related California said that
“Independent living is primarily how folks have been aging in their own
homes. As seniors age, they often need
more care and support. One step beyond
that is assisted living and Board and Care facilities (6 beds or less). One step further would be skilled nursing
facilities. As a commission, our goal is
for advocating and providing for a range of services for long term care.”
Unfortunately, only two, IHSS and skilled nursing, have government
funding. “This is causing seniors to
fall into homelessness at rapid rates.
There are over 200K living in assisted living facilities in California today. The majority of the residents in assisted
living today consider these homes their permanent living space.”
Tim Dunn, Associate Director of Housing Development at Mercy
Housing at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco said that Mercy Housing (a
non-profit) is working on housing projects with 23K units in the country and
10K in California, all deeply below 60% of the poverty level.
“Service enriched housing is one of the options for the
senior population,” he said. Mission
Creek Senior Housing is a project that is about 15 years old. Rents are only about $300 a month for residents with subsidies, roughly a
third of their income as rent. There are
also services on the site. “There is a
resident service coordinator to make sure people get IHSS, transportation, etc.,”
an important factor.
Residents get annual health surveys of Activities of Daily
Living (ADLs). There is also an Adult
Day Health Care Center on-site. They can then go to their apartment in the
evening with IHSS support. “It’s not
24-hour care. We don’t do IHSS, but we do
get people connected. One of the things
you can’t do is plan for unscheduled needs.
We can’t administer medications.
San Francisco has experienced a great lost in assisted living which was
historically small mom and pop facilities which are now no longer financially
viable,” he said.
Laguna Honda Hospital Campus is a 62-acre site with capacity
for large development, right on the muni line.
The city is allowing development of senior housing, which can support 250
to 300 units. The city of San Francisco
will provide free land and about $50 million in capital financing.
However, he said that, “Even with all of these resources we
still are hitting a barrier with doing the licensed care. This
particular property is currently on hold due to financing issues,” he
said. Hopefully development will start
next year.
Two other panelists, Dan McDonald, Deputy Director of
Lending at Community Vision California Capital and Consulting and Michael
Siglala of Innovative Development and Living Solutions of California worked on
a project called Magnolia Crossing for years.
It’s a textbook case of a project that works but was
developed about ten years ago and the model unfortunately isn’t financially
viable anymore. McDonald said, “I joined
in 2012. I had worked for a bank working
with private and memory care. The only
financeable projects at my bank were large wealth developers. I began to believe that affordable assisted
living was possible,” he said.
This project worked because U. S. Bank purchased the tax
credits (assisted living waivers). “What
we would like to do is replicate how to do this in other communities. The expansion of the assisted living waiver
program(would help and many other programs with the state would provide the
money that the community needs,” he said.
Sigala said, “I always worked in urban planning, and wanted
to do some development. I was the primary
caregiver for my mom. I saw this as a
big emergency need for seniors, how do we house them? One of the first people I talked to was Dan.” In Clovis, they developed a project called Magnolia
Crossing senior living community.
They had a mixed income model of home like assisted living
project. There were a total of 48 units,
developed in 2013, and they did it as a non-profit. They received $10 million in funding to do a
project that had never been done before.
The project was three homes about 10K square feet each. One had 16 units of memory care, 36 other units
were assisted living. They were studio
units, where everyone had their own bathroom.
“Isolation and loneliness are two of the main factors
influencing the senior community. We
have 35 full-time caregivers, LVNs, cooks, care and support staff.” There are both very low income on Medi-Cal
living with private pay. 10% of their residents
are over 100 years old! The new market
tax credit program was the only program available at this time (you had to show
a commercial component (services)) to make it work. “The Assisted Living Waiver program is
great but it’s unpredictable. The reimbursement
rates are 10-20% below what they could be to make this feasible,” he said.
