It's A Problem We're Having, Too

We have an elderly relative who needs assisted living but can't enter until her house is sold, and with what appears to be more houses for sale than not in her town, it looks like that's never going to happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us/22home.html?_r=1&partner=EXCITE&ei=5043

November 22, 2008

Housing Crisis Snares Elderly Who Can’t Sell

By JACK HEALY

The housing crisis has kept thousands of older Americans who need support and care from moving into retirement communities or assisted-living centers, effectively stranding them in their own homes.

Without selling their houses or condominiums, many cannot buy into retirement homes that require a payment of $100,000 to $500,000 just to move in. So they are scratching themselves off waiting lists, canceling plans with packing services and staying put, in houses that fit well 30 years ago, but over the years have become lonely, too large or too treacherous to navigate.

“It is part of the hidden problem of the recession,” said Larry Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “Every neighborhood, every family’s got them.”

Facilities that have watched their waiting lists wither and their occupancy rates fall in the last year are now scrambling to bring people through their doors. Some assisted-living centers have called in real estate agents to teach prospective residents about online advertising and how to clean and preen their homes for showings. Others have set up programs with banks to provide bridge loans to homeowners, or are discounting apartments and offering low-interest loans.

The Cedar Community, which provides a range of housing for the elderly in West Bend, Wis., has seen independent-living occupancy rates drop by 4 percent this year. There were so many people waiting for their homes to sell that the facility decided, in some cases, to let new residents pay month-to-month until they could unload their houses and use the proceeds on the facility’s entry deposit.

“We’ve never done that before,” said Tracey MacGregor, a spokeswoman at Cedar Community.

But for people like Ruth Scher, 85, selling their home is a critical first step before moving on, or moving anywhere. Ms. Scher put her two-bedroom condominium in Delray Beach, Fla., on the market last year, but no one has made an offer.

In the 34 years since she moved to South Florida, Ms. Scher’s husband has died, the siblings who moved south from New York to join her have died, and her friends have moved away. She is recovering from a fall that broke her clavicle and suffers from arthritis in one shoulder, and she says it is time to move back.

“It’s lonesome,” Ms. Scher said. “So many other people have passed away or moved away. It’s very lonely. The children would love me to come up and I would love to, but I just can’t sell.”

Ms. Scher hoped to move to a retirement community in Cornwall, N.Y., where she has friends. But in the year her home sat on the market, she could not even find a broker willing to sell the property, she said. She finally de-listed her condominium.

“They tell you, ‘We’re sorry, we can’t get any people to come and look,’ ” Ms. Scher said. “If I can’t sell here, I can’t go nowhere.”

There is no way to say how many older Americans are in similar straits, as no statistics track how many of America’s 4.27 million unsold homes are owned by people 65 or older. But industry groups and administrators at retirement homes call the problem a growing one, which worsened as the financial crisis spread from real estate to lending markets. It has been felt worst in regions hit hardest by the housing bust.

“It remains to be seen whether we have a short-term stress, or whether we’re facing a crisis,” said Mr. Minnix, of the Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “We’re into brand new territory here. It is deeper and potentially broader.”

Across the country, occupancy rates for independent and assisted-living facilities have fallen slightly in the last year, by about 2 percent through the middle of 2008, according to the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing and Care Industry.

But the problem is playing out acutely in hard-hit areas like Florida, where the vacancy rate at some facilities is up 20 percent to 30 percent over last year, said Paul Williams, director of government relations for the Assisted Living Federation of America. At Luther Manor, a retiree community in Milwaukee, the number of residents moving into independent living has dropped 20 percent this year. In southern Ohio, 65 percent of the people who visited the Bristol Village retirement community this year said they could not buy a unit because their homes were still hanging around their necks.

For these businesses, each occupied room generates thousands of dollars each year. Retirement condos charge monthly fees ranging from a few hundred dollars to $5,000, while the average price for private-pay care in assisted living is $3,013 per month, or $36,156 per year, according to a MetLife study.

At the Crosby Commons assisted-living center in Shelton, Conn., where waiting lists that once ran two years or more have shrunk to six months, some residents who moved before selling their homes are spending through their savings as they wait, said Lois Poultney, the center’s director. One resident had to move from Crosby’s free-market homes to its subsidized rent-controlled apartments, Ms. Poultney said.

“I’m hearing it over and over again: ‘Mom needs to sell her house before she can afford to move in,’ ” she said.

There are signs some families and retirees are turning to adult day care services as a stopgap. Providers say their business has spiked as people look for an alternative to continuing care or home aides to provide food, companionship and therapeutic services. But Mr. Williams of the Assisted Living Federation said that people who need more day-to-day care, those who have trouble getting up stairs or who need someone to check on them, were taking a risk by staying at home.

“When they’re coming in at 85, they’re coming in very frail and needing services,” he said. “They can’t wait this out. They need the care when they need the care. That’s the scary part. You have people putting it off when they need care right now.”

For Katherine Styberg, 84, that moment of realization came when she slipped on a patch of ice in February and fractured a vertebra. She has to use a cane when she walks now, and she says she has been thinking about how she lives alone, and if she fell in her two-bedroom condominium in Milwaukee, no one could catch her or help her up.

The real estate broker calls Ms. Styberg a day before bringing potential buyers to see her apartment, and a few have come to look around, but no one has made an offer yet.

As parents linger in their homes, they say their children start to worry. Some adult children are even facing financial hardships if they cannot sell their parents’ homes.

In April, Ruth Swessel, 84, of Milwaukee, had a stroke that aggravated the effects of her aging, leaving her unable to follow “Meet the Press” or read the political magazines she once loved. Her daughter, Laura Westling, had to put her into skilled care, and the family began the process of selling Ms. Swessel’s house to pay for the facility’s $60,000 annual cost.

The house has been sitting on the market since the summer, and Ms. Swessel’s family has lowered the price twice, to $174,500 from $189,900, but they have not been able to close a deal. Her children are spending her investments to pay for her care, but Ms. Westling said they did not know what they would do once that money ran out.

“It’s not easy,” she said.

As stock markets have slid in the last year, homes have become a more critical source of wealth for retirees who have watched their mutual funds and 401(k) accounts hollow out. Next to accrued Social Security benefits, housing is the single greatest asset for people 60 to 70 years old, making up 22 percent of their total wealth and outweighing investments and pensions, according to the Center for Retirement Research. For retirees like Herman McHan, who watched the value of his mutual funds fall to $35,000, from $70,000, or Sylvia Merlin, whose portfolio has lost nearly $200,000 of value, owning an interminably on-the-market home compounds the worries of their dwindling investments.

For Ms. Merlin, it is a disconcerting place to be at age 93. She said she and her late husband, Al, had lived modestly to raise their four children, taking one vacation a year, to the Jersey Shore. She is on oxygen now, and finds it harder to get around her fifth-floor apartment outside of Philadelphia. The doorman’s wife takes her to the hairdresser on Fridays, but Ms. Merlin said she wanted more consistent care.

“I’m going to be 94, and I need help,” she said. “Making the bed is difficult. I need a little help taking a shower. Those things are difficult. I was a great cook, but I really don’t cook anymore. I bought the TV dinners, and they’re pretty lousy.”

No one has made an offer on her condominium, and Ms. Merlin said the retirement home had refunded the $1,000 deposit on the $130,000 unit she hoped to buy. Now, instead of moving, she said she had decided to stay.

“I just couldn’t go anywhere until I sold my apartment,” she said. “I and a lot of other oldsters are stuck.”

R. I. P. Pushing Daisies, and Overcoming Overeating/HAES

I just read on a Disney-related mailing list that yes, it's officially canceled. Oh, well. At least Scrubs is taking half its place on Wednesday nights come January, followed by Lost at 9pm. Oh, happy day! I better get hustling re-watching the series. I'm only half-way through season 2, with Charlie set to discover Henry Gale's balloon in the next episode.

But I won't be able to do that next week. Vacation time! We're going to use those precious few days together to sleep late (hopefully), watch plenty of television, shop in at least one mall with a bookstore (I have a list!), and eat whatever we want, starting with a boxful of bakery products my husband will pick up on his way home from work in about 4 hours from now.

One thing I'm specifically going to work on is dropping the guilt from eating food. Already this morning I told my husband no less than four times (twice via email) not to buy the donuts, that I shouldn't be eating them, and each time he told to to shut up, he's buying them anyway, that there's no reason I can't enjoy them. I'm already packing up all my diet and weight loss and "healthy eating" books for the week and bringing out the HAES and fat fiction ones and will soon start reading the revised edition of Overcoming Overeating (Finally!) and have the Intuitive Eating book on reserve at the library. I must admit that I do feel better physically when I eat a more varied diet, one that includes meat and dairy and a wee bit of chocolate. Now to convince myself I'm not going to go to hell or get hauled off by the food police if I do. My son already told me he's hoping I make his favorite butter cookies for Christmas this year, that he misses them the years I'm on a diet and refuse to bake them.

People On-Line Thought I Was Exaggerating

People down South and from the mid-West really have no concept of how bad this economical situation is where I live. They think I live in a mansion because we pay over $1100 a month rent because they have an entire house with an acre of land, 4 bedrooms and two full baths rented for half that amount. When I say I pay over $2 for a stinking head of lettuce they accuse me of buying organic from, well, who knows where.When I mentioned a few years ago that our local hospital was laying off nurses I was told I must be making that up or mis-read something, that there's a nursing shortage. And when I mentioned that local hospitals have not only been closing specialty units (We lost maternity and pediatrics, as well as psyche and almost all out-patient services, like physio-therapy and well-child clinics) but actually going bankrupt, I was laughed it. It's not until I send them articles like these that they believed me.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27809791

Economy is sickening U.S. hospitals
Data shows decline in admissions and increase in patients who can’t pay
The Associated Press
updated 5:14 p.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 19, 2008

TRENTON, N.J. - The dismal economy has American hospitals ailing, with new data showing declines in overall admissions and elective procedures, plus a significant jump in patients who can't pay for care, the American Hospital Association said Wednesday.

Hospitals also have been hurt by losses on their investments due to the turmoil on Wall Street, and many are finding it more expensive to borrow money — if they can at all, according to a report from the association, which represents about 5,000 U.S. hospitals.

"The worst part is the combination of all of the above," said Rich Umbdenstock, the association's president and chief executive.

Some of the hardest-hit hospitals began reducing staffing and services as early as last spring and more will follow, although hospitals are trying to limit the impact on patients, said Umbdenstock. He said hospitals are more likely to eliminate entire services — money-losers or ones with high operating costs — than to make across-the-board cuts that weaken all services.

"There have been hospital closures (this year), particularly in some of the more heavily impacted areas," such as New Jersey, where hospitals are providing more and more unreimbursed care, he said.

The downturn is hitting hospitals worse than other industries, he said, and many already were struggling due to pressures including government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid not paying the full cost of treatment. Hospitals are worried the Obama administration's health care reforms will affect reimbursement rates for those two huge programs, which cover 55 percent of all hospital patients.

A hospital association survey about conditions over the past three months drew responses from 736 hospitals, and the association report also uses figures from the July-September period collected from 557 hospitals that send quarterly reports to a central system run by the Colorado Hospital Association.

The Databank hospitals' investment results amounted to a combined loss of $832 million, compared with a $396 million gain a year earlier — a big problem because normally investment gains help make up for some of the costs not covered by patients and insurers.

Meanwhile, the interest those hospitals paid on borrowed funds jumped by 15 percent in the third quarter, compared to 2007's third quarter, another difficult squeeze because hospitals generally borrow money for expansions and upgrades, multimillion-dollar technology and even sometimes to cover payroll and pay regular vendors.

Other key findings:

* 67 percent of hospitals saw some drop in elective procedures; 6 percent saw a significant drop.
* 63 percent saw some decline in overall admissions; 9 percent saw a bigger drop.
* Inpatient and outpatient surgeries and emergency department visits were all down roughly 1 percent in the third quarter.
* Half of hospitals have seen a moderate or significant jump in uncompensated care, with a jump averaging 8 percent. The association cites unemployed people losing their health insurance.
* Total profit margin at the Database hospitals dropped from an average 6.1 percent in 2007's third quarter to an average loss of 1.6 percent in 2008's third quarter.
* 56 percent of hospitals are reconsidering or postponing renovations or expansions, and about 40 percent are delaying improvements to information technology or other equipment.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27809791/

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And this one:

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/11/19/2008-11-19_price_dropoff_misses_nyc.html

Price dropoff misses N.Y.C.

BY WILLIAM SHERMAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, November 20th 2008, 1:20 AM

Plummeting energy costs triggered a big drop in consumer prices in the New York area last month - the biggest four-week decrease in 53 years.

The local figures - a 1% decrease for all items in the Consumer Price Index - are roughly in line with the statistics for the nation, according to Department of Labor statistics released Wednesday.

But the October fall is no reason for New Yorkers to celebrate. We're paying more for just about everything including clothing, food and rent, than we were a year ago.

Overall, the metro area CPI is up 4.3% for the year in categories that include a 6.7% spike in food and beverage costs, while apparel is up 4.5%, and rent has grown 5.5%, according to the New York Office of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And one item, the increase in food prices here, including a 0.5% pop up last month, is a mystery to government economists.

"There's really no explanation for rising food prices," said Michael Dolfman, Regional Commissioner for the Bureau.

"When fuel prices go up, you expect merchants to pass those increases on to consumers and fuel is a big component of food costs because food has to be delivered," he added, "but now we have a drastic reduction in fuel costs and we haven't seen reductions in food and commodity costs."

An answer to the mystery was suggested by several retail merchants interviewed. Once prices go up for most goods and services, it's very rare to see them go down.

"Flour is down, but my bread suppliers haven't reduced their prices," said Saul Zabar, owner of Zabar's, the specialty food emporium on Manhattan's West Side.

"I know other commodities are down, eggs and milk but it's the same there. We have to go after the wholesalers and get them to pull their prices down," he said.

Still, there are bright notes for New York consumers that showed inflation is in check, according to the October statistics.

Energy costs fell 9.2% for the month, and medical care, a category that had been rising sharply for the past five years, fell 0.4%.

wsherman@nydailynews.com

Well, Maybe It's Not So Bad

I had some more of that Quaker instant oatmeal today, this time mixing the pumpkin spice in with my regular old fashioned oats. Much better!

Another thing much better is my foot. It still hurts a bit, but not like the past few days. Perhaps I mis-diagnosed myself this time.

Got some decent exercise in, too, Richard's Blast Off video, the original. Of course I had to revise it a bit for my foot and neck, as always, but still worked up a little sweat.

Not much else today.

30 in 30 - Day 18

Too bad I really have nothing to post about.

Ouch!

I have to watch how I step, as I'm pretty sure my plantar fasciitis is coming back. Every time I step down on my left foot the pain starts up again. The first time I had it I was in pain for two years, trying all kinds of exercises and treatments. The only thing that really got rid of it was the new orthotic. I have a feeling I might be needing a new one, not just a re-lining of this old one.

Because of this foot pain I popped that new Richard Simmons DVD in, Sit Tight. It's worse than I feared. Even the exercisers, even RICHARD, had a hard time keeping up with the steps, mixed up the moves, or couldn't keep up. The camera work was shoddy, sometimes focusing on the woman with cerebral palsy as steps were changing to something completely different than what she was doing or even capable of doing, and many times when they showed a group shot you can see that many were either behind, doing the steps wrong, or completely lost and just sitting there waiting to find a place they could jump in to. I lasted a few seconds beyond the 17 minute point when my neck just gave out on me. I'm gonna pay for this today! Here it is, hours later, and I can barely lift my right arm or turn my head. Tomorrow it's back to the nice and slow Mindful Movements.



I wrote yesterday about that Quaker Oats/Walmart pumpkin spice oatmeal, and how I was going to have my first packet this morning. Yuck! A mouthful of grit and chemicals. At least my husband will enjoy the rest of them. Tomorrow I'll be back to my old fashioned oats with plain old fruit mixed in.

I Love Oatmeal!

I have oatmeal for breakfast a minimum of 5 out of every 7 days of the week. Once in a while I'll make scrambled tofu, and every Sunday I have a vegan burrito. But every other day I grab my trusty old 4-Cup Pyrex measuring cup, dump a few raisins in the bottom, add a cup of filtered water and a half cup of old-fashioned oats, nuke for 2 minutes, then add either fruit or a spoon of peanut butter and cocoa powder, mix well, and yum, yum eat. This meal holds me until around 2pm most days, and that's pretty amazing for someone with hypoglycemia!

I like to mix it up with all different fruits, but now and then I just have a yen for something, well, different. The first cool day after a long summer usually finds me opening a can of pureed pumpkin, and for the next week or so, or until I get so sick of it I dump the rest of the can in the garbage, I have pumpkin flavored oats. Well, Quaker has done me one better. I found out on this and other blog posts that Quaker and Walmart are having a promotion of limited time only flavors of instant oatmeal, pumpkin spice and roasted pecan. I'm usually not a fan of instant oatmeal because of the sugar, and even if I had 4 packets of instant the meal doesn't hold me more than an hour because of that, but I couldn't pass up buying these yesterday at the tiny Walmart in Harrison, NJ. (I call it "tiny" because it's about a quarter the size of the Walmarts I used to go to when we lived in Kissimmee, Florida. God, I miss that place and can't wait to move back when hubby retires!) It's always jammed, filthy, aisles are over-crowded and the lines take forever to get through, but it's the only Walmart I've got so I'm stuck. It was worth the 15 minute wait on line to pay for my 4 boxes of oatmeal. Today was burrito day, but tomorrow morning I'll be diving into my first bowl of Quaker Pumpkin Spice Walmart-only oatmeal, and it better be good!