Despite Vacancies, Idaho Keeps Building
Virginia Brink wrinkles her nose as she complains about the tasteless food served at her last retirement apartment in Coeur d’Alene.
“It made me sick,” she says. “Then I had a heart attack. I knew sometime I’d need help, so I started looking around.”
She liked what she saw at Sylvan House, one of three assisted living centers to open in Kootenai County since last fall. Those three boost the number of assisted living homes and centers in the county to 23.
In Idaho, “assisted living” applies to small group homes as well as large centers - any place that helps residents but doesn’t provide skilled nursing care. Most even handle people with Alzheimer’s disease who need supervision but not constant medical attention.
Brink, 93, likes Sylvan’s Victorian armchairs and love seats, cloth napkins at the dinner table, soft-light ceiling lamps and respect for independence. Wide hallways give her plenty of room for her walker, and she can slip into the whirlpool tub from the side.
She moved into Sylvan House in January.
“It feels like home,” she says.
Her words are magic to Jonathan Emerson, national marketing director for Oregon-based Assisted Living Concepts, Sylvan’s parent company.
The company built its 39-bed center based on statistics showing that Kootenai County’s 60-plus population has grown 18 percent since 1990.
His company was not the only one to sense opportunity. Bill DePew, the Panhandle’s associate ombudsman for Idaho’s Aging and Adult Services, estimates that 200 assisted living beds have been added to Kootenai County in the past three years.
Half are in remodeled homes with room for up to eight. The others are in apartment-style centers with room for more than 50 residents.
Right now, they all have the same problem.
“Most centers are half empty, but yet they keep building,” DePew says. “Why? I don’t know.”
Debra Gordon is the North Idaho director for Aging and Adult Services and keeps track of trends that target seniors. The proliferation of assisted living beds baffles her, too.
“We keep thinking those assisted living folks know something we don’t know,” she says. “We’re totally overbuilt in this area right now.”
Idaho’s Medicaid system doesn’t pay for assisted living yet but Emerson’s company, which owns nine centers in Idaho, is lobbying the Legislature to change that.
Emerson says he believes legislators will soon recognize that assisted living care costs less than nursing home care, which Medicaid covers.
DePew’s research shows assisted living care in North Idaho ranges from $1,200 to $2,900 a month; nursing home care runs $3,000 to $4,500 a month.
Emerson says his center’s health isn’t dependent on the Legislature. Twenty-four of Sylvan’s beds were taken by the middle of August, and he predicts the facility will fill by early fall.
“Forty-year-olds are moving in and bringing their parents with them to retire,” he says.
Tamara Littman’s Preferred Living doesn’t struggle to stay full. She has room for eight in her ranch-style home but considers her home full with fewer people when residents need extra attention.
Littman is a registered nurse who invites her residents along on daily errands and on trips for burgers and ice cream. She serves their meals on china and cleans relentlessly to fend off an institutional smell.
The family-style atmosphere is important to LeMerle Rivers. She’s 84 and lived on her own until heart trouble complicated her medication schedule. Her brother worried that she’d mix up her pills. He helped her find Littman’s home two years ago.
“It’s so homey, and we go places,” Rivers says.
Littman selects her residents carefully and rarely has vacancies. Residents pay $1,000 to $3,000 a month, depending on how much care they need.
“Residential homes like this are a nice alternative to institutions,” she says. “Big centers aren’t for everyone.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo