Update

I’ve once again allowed the blog to lie dormant over the summer as I was in discussions with my attorney. In May, the Director of Center Communities sent me the fourth in a series of threatening letters, this time threatening me with eviction for something I posted on the blog. Everyone who sees the letter asks the same question: "Has this woman not heard of the First Amendment?" This behavior is typical of Hebrew SeniorLife personnel. They apparently believe that telling the truth about them in public is or should be legally actionable.

After nine years of abuse, and a year and a half of victimization at the hands of the Director, I retained a new attorney who presented Hebrew SeniorLife with a 93A Consumer Protection Demand Letter, accusing them of deceptive conduct and demanding their help in relocating me, as well as a monetary settlement for both statutory violations and emotional distress. We also cc’d the Director of MassHousing, which holds the mortgage on Center Communities and contributes to my rent, and the President of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies (Boston’s Jewish Federation), which is closely affiliated with HSL.



I won’t go into all of our grievances outlined in the letter, but I do want to mention one incident, as it was particularly egregious and I feel strongly that it needs to be made public. I recently found fecal matter smeared all over the laundry room on my floor. This is a direct result of two of Center Communities’ policies that I have described here before and about which I have been complaining for years:



     ➣ Leaving seniors here far beyond the point at which they can reasonably be cared for in a facility of this nature;



     ➣ Refusing to require their families to hire professional caretakers, allowing them instead to hire what are essentially babysitters at a fraction of the cost.



Their lawyer subsequently came back with a monetary offer so low it was insulting. I’ve told my lawyer that if they remain firm, it is time for us to go to court. He also insisted they haven’t the connections to find me alternate housing, which is nonsense, although in his defense, it may very well be what they’re telling him, and he hasn’t been working with them long enough to know that they have an extremely troubled relationship with the truth. 


With the delivery of my letter, there are now three residents of Center Communities who are engaged in litigation against Hebrew SeniorLife. In addition, I have recently spoken to two other residents who are on the verge of retaining legal representation. Obviously, this makes a qualitative statement about the caliber of the facility’s management staff, and of the characters of those who comprise it. 


Center Communities has been extremely poorly managed during the fourteen years it has been owned by Hebrew SeniorLife, and it has a history of being threatened with litigation and capitulating in order to make problems go away. However, as terrible an administrator as the previous Director was, and as toxic and abusive of both residents and staff as the former Property Manager was (a situation that was tolerated for years without intervention by Hebrew SeniorLife), during their decade-long tenure they never managed to elicit three (and potentially five) legal actions simultaneously. The current management staff has created an atmosphere of general unhappiness and fostered a level of ill will that is unprecedented in the 42-year history of this facility.

Furthermore, as I have mentioned before, this attitude extends far beyond the boundaries of these three buildings. There have been units sitting vacant for months because they have been unable to rent them. Increasingly, people don't want to move into this facility and don’t want to place their elderly or disabled relatives here. Moreover, it is rare to find anyone within the Town of Brookline - public employee or private citizen - who isn’t critical of Center Communities. The development of its negative reputation began under the previous Director and has continued into the present.



It is important to note that when these scenarios occur, they are often the result of behavior on the part of Center Communities' staff that I can only describe as "bullying". When forced to deal with a strong-willed person, even if that individual is creating problems for others, they frequently back down. Conversely, when confronting someone who is less likely to stand up to them, they become more aggressive, often inappropriately so. They're also arbitrary in their decisions about whom to go after. Frequently, they will take a disliking to someone, and oppress him or her for that reason alone, even to the point of fabricating "evidence" to be used against that individual. I have seen this happen on more than one occasion and have experienced it firsthand; as I mentioned in a blog post last year, the Director of the facility was engaged for some time in a campaign of harassment of me, which ultimately resulted in my retaining an attorney and proceeding legally against them.

In the meantime, the quality of care here continues to deteriorate, while both the management of Center Communities and the administration of Hebrew SeniorLife look the other way. There have been threats of suicide on the part of elderly residents, a situation with which the social workers (who do little enough to begin with) are completely unequipped to deal - and the management has no interest in hiring professionals who have experience in dealing with geriatric clinical depression. It is just one more manifestation of Center Communities presenting itself as being something it is not.



As one outside social worker told me (upon being informed that Center Communities staff members have been representing the facility to prospective residents and their families as being equivalent to Assisted Living):

“It isn’t Assisted Living. It isn’t even what they officially represent it as being: Senior Supportive Housing. It’s nothing more than Independent Living, with a few supportive services - and the services they have are ‘meh’.”

She went on to say, “The facility doesn't really fit into any category. It’s just a little bit of this and a little bit of that.” The upshot is that she no longer recommends it to her geriatric clients.


As I mentioned in an earlier post, over the span of the last year and a half since they were made aware of this situation, either the CEO or the VP of Senior Living (who is in charge of the residential facilities) should have called me and said, “Alright, enough. You aren’t happy; we aren’t happy. Let’s sit down and see if we can resolve this amicably, before it escalates further” - but they couldn’t be bothered. Other residents, being unable to resolve issues through the management, have also written to the CEO. Invariably, he bounces the letters back to the management staff who refused to do anything in the first place. Hebrew SeniorLife’s default method of dealing with any situation, from the top down, is to do nothing and hope that it resolves itself. It rarely does. 



A friend said to me the other day, “I don’t understand why they aren’t willing to work with you to help you to find another place to live. They don’t want you there, you don’t want to be there - it would be better for them as well as for you.” Precisely.



I think there are a number of reasons for this: they resent my exposure of their malfeasance and don’t want to exert themselves on my behalf, they don’t want to take responsibility for creating this situation, they don’t want to call in any favors for me, and they are trying to minimize the amount of public exposure. I suspect the last one figures into it significantly, which is purely ridiculous. My obscure little blog has already developed something of a following. It’s been a year and a half and a mere twenty posts, yet it’s had over 6,300 hits - and I’ve done almost nothing to promote it. 


Moreover, I have already involved MassHousing and the Jewish Federation, and have made it clear to Hebrew SeniorLife that, in addition to litigation, I intend also to involve HUD (with whom they also have a contract) and the Office of Elder Affairs (as I’m sure much of what goes on here qualifies as elder abuse), and to go to their Board of Directors and their large donors, as well as to newspapers and television news outlets. In short, I intend to make this situation even more public than I already have - yet still, their knee-jerk reaction is one of denial. There is no shame or remorse, certainly no acknowledgement of culpability.



Hebrew SeniorLife has been masquerading for years as an altruistic organization. Increasingly, people are coming to realize it is not. The bureaucrats who run it are focused primarily upon its bottom line, and care little, if at all, for the welfare of those in its charge. It is beyond time for the Jewish community to become aware of it.

I have a mouse trapped in my closet.

Last night, at around 9:00, I saw a mouse scurry across my bedroom floor. It ran into my linen closet, and I trapped it by placing a sheet across the crevice between the door and the floor.

They've had a problem here with residents who hoard, and although it presents a health and safety hazard for the other residents, naturally, as is invariably the case, they've refused to deal with it. One of the hoarders died recently, and as the family has been cleaning out the apartment (where were they when their elderly parent was hoarding?), mice who had taken up residence in the garbage have been scattering throughout the building.

So I called the answering service, and as is par for the course in this facility, they refused to help me. This is something else that goes on here regularly. The answering service is horrendous. Firstly, they habitually avoid answering the phone. (I experienced this myself a couple of months ago, during a weekend in which the temperature reached 15 below at night. I tried repeatedly to reach them, to lodge a noise complaint - but what if there had been an emergency involving an elderly resident? What if the heat had stopped working, or the pipes had burst?) When they do answer, they habitually refuse to take messages. Last night, the woman I spoke to actually agreed to take a message (she must be new), but she refused to page the on-call maintenance person. It's 4:52am; I've been up since 3:00, listening to the mouse trying to escape.

The management has been asked repeatedly to replace the answering service, but they refuse to do so. They rationalize away all complaints about them. I'm not surprised; they have an affinity for them. They all simply refuse to do their jobs.

Update 9:53am: A couple of the maintenance guys came and trapped the mouse for me. Thank God for the maintenance staff. They're the only ones around here who genuinely try to help the residents.

The Property Manager got back to me yesterday afternoon. I had told her the family of the elderly woman above me was in town, that it was an opportunity for her to speak to them, but that if she didn’t intend to, I was going to try to catch them. She finally emailed me back, to tell me I hadn’t the “right as a tenant to confront any resident or their guest".

I responded by telling her I had no intention of “confronting” the family, but that if I happen to meet someone in the hall and they’re willing to converse with me, I am certainly within my rights to have a conversation with them (which ended up not happening, anyway). This is the arrogance of Hebrew SeniorLife staff; they actually feel they have the right to restrict someone’s freedom of speech. One doesn’t have the right to converse with others, if there is a chance one will say something the staff doesn't want them to hear.

The really infuriating aspect is that when one wants them to do their jobs, one is told this is merely independent housing for seniors, with a few supportive services. Virtually every suggestion or request is met with an answer beginning with, "We can't... ." However, when they feel their positions threatened, all of a sudden this facility is at the level of assisted living, and they have the right to determine whether or not one may approach another resident. The denial, cognitive dissonance and ignorance of the law are breathtaking.



I assume the PM was told by the Director to say this to me. I suspect she may be trying once again, as she did last year, to gather material to use to launch another volley of false accusations at me.

These people are making it easier and easier for me to choose litigation.

As I said in the previous post, I’ve allowed the blog to lie dormant as I’ve tried to resolve these issues with Hebrew SeniorLife. Unfortunately, there’s been little movement. I continue to have pronounced noise issues in this new apartment, and in addition, there is an elderly couple down the hall in an advanced state of deterioration, being “cared” for by a family of non-professionals who’ve turned them into a sort of family business. The couple is incontinent, the “caretakers” don’t keep them clean and there is an odor of urine pervading the hall.

This is all the result of the fact that - as I mentioned in one of my posts of last year - people are left here for far too long, way past the point at which they should be moved on to facilities in which they would be better served. It has recently been brought to my attention that it isn’t merely a matter of laziness and apathy on the part of the administration (although it is certainly that), but that in addition, the management represents this facility to potential renters as being a sort of low cost alternative to assisted living facilities and nursing homes. They’re either told, or allowed to infer, that the social work department (which consists solely of two social workers, one full-time and one part-time, and one or two college interns per semester) monitors the residents far more closely, and interacts with them far more regularly, than it actually does. There have been incidents in which people have moved in, and almost immediately moved out, because their families discovered they had been lied to, and that this facility isn't capable of rendering the kind of care they were led to believe it is. 



Regarding the exchanges between lawyers - my lawyer responded to Rhonda’s lawyer last fall. Her lawyer declined to respond, refused to return my lawyer’s phone calls and emails, and actually ran away from him in court, twice, when he tried to talk to her. I don’t know whether or not this behavior is illegal or in violation of the legal profession’s code of ethics, but I intend to lodge a formal complaint against her with the Boston and Massachusetts Bar Associations.

After weeks of this avoidance, I took all of the correspondence to date and sent it to Louis Woolf, the CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife. Two weeks later, my lawyer received a hastily cobbled together letter from Rhonda’s lawyer, which distilled down to, “We’re absolutely right, he’s absolutely wrong, all of our accusations are true, all of his are false, tell him not to bother Mr. Woolf any more, and we think he’d be happier elsewhere.” The latter statement is especially ludicrous, as I told Lou Woolf in my letter that his employees have destroyed my health, that I want to leave this facility, and that I would like him to use Hebrew SeniorLife’s influence and connections to help me to do so, so that I don’t have to be on waiting lists for years. That, they chose to ignore. My lawyer emailed her lawyer to inquire as to what they intended to do to facilitate my departure. He never heard back from her.



A week later, I received a three or four-line letter from Louis Woolf, saying, “Sorry to hear about your problems. Hope they can be resolved. Best of luck in the coming year.” I’m sure he was told by legal counsel to send it merely so it would look as though he’d responded to me, in case this ended up in court. Instead of coming to me like an adult (which he should have done a year ago, when I began blogging), and saying, “This has gone far enough; let’s you and I meet and see if we can resolve this situation amicably”, he’s chosen to hide behind the lawyer’s skirt - and for this kind of “leadership”, he’s being paid in the neighborhood of half a million dollars per year. It’s absolutely disgraceful, and is yet one more manifestation of a reality I described here last year - that for decades, Hebrew SeniorLife has been pulling a con job on the Jewish community of Boston. It takes millions of dollars per year from that community, and returns very little of it in the form of services. HSL has become a haven for career bureaucrats who view the organization as their own private cash cow.



Currently, the most pressing noise issue involves an 86 year-old woman who lives above me. She’s frail, in failing physical and mental health, and complains to one of her caretakers that she’s bored and lonely, and has nothing to do all day but rearrange her drawers - which she does incessantly, making a great deal of noise, beginning at 5:00 AM and continuing until midnight, when she finally goes to sleep. I’ve informed the management that she is exhibiting compulsive repetitive behavior and that they need to involve her children, to tell them she needs to be examined by a doctor, preferably a geriatric psychiatrist, and to suggest it is time to move her to a facility in which she would be monitored and interacted with on a daily basis. So far, they’ve avoided doing all of the above.



This week, I sent two emails to the Property Manager of Center Communities. The first was sent Monday, describing the situation yet again, and telling her if nothing is done, I will have to proceed to litigation. Today is Thursday, and I’ve had no reply. The woman’s children are in town today for her birthday. I have, this morning, sent her another email, informing her of this and telling her this is her opportunity to speak to them. If she does nothing, I intend to proceed legally against Hebrew SeniorLife. I also intend to bring in inspectors from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to show them that a large percentage, probably the majority, of the residents here belong in assisted living facilities and nursing homes, and that it is a matter of elder abuse that they are allowed to remain here for as long as they are, with little if any professional care. I am also seriously considering going to the newspapers, and to the news departments of the local television stations.

I've allowed the blog to lie fallow for the past few months as I've continued to attempt to negotiate with Hebrew SeniorLife. During that time, Rhonda retained an attorney who sent me a letter in which she made false accusations and threatened me with eviction. I then retained an attorney as well, who responded in writing to Rhonda's attorney. Her attorney has had my attorney's letter in her possession for over a month. To date, we have not received a reply.

I'm posting this entry because today is the eighth anniversary of the day I moved into this miserable excuse for a facility. I am beside myself; I originally thought I'd be here for six to eight months. I never imagined I'd be trapped here for eight years.

Although I now have another apartment, problems persist. In fact, the number of problems experienced by residents in general has been increasing, as have resident complaints, and as a response, the management of Center Communities is doing what it has always done - ignoring those complaints and hoping the problems will simply resolve themselves. I am told resident morale is at all all-time low. It is certainly at the lowest level at which it has been during my eight years here.

In the six months since I established this blog, it has received over 4400 page views. Hebrew SeniorLife's management is aware of the blog's existence (and of the existence of its associated Facebook page) and my understanding is that they are unhappy about it - but at no point has anyone picked up a phone to call me. At no point has anyone said, "This has gone farther than any of us would have liked. Come in and talk to us; we would like to hear your grievances and come to some sort of resolution."

This is the most laissez-faire operation I have ever encountered. No one, from the top down, does anything s/he is not compelled to do. As I said in an earlier post, it has become a haven for career bureaucrats, and it is amazing to me that it has remained in business for as long as it has, let alone is as profitable as it is.

These people make money in spite of themselves.

More incompetence on the part of Hebrew SeniorLife staff

There is a young woman who lives diagonally above me who is developmentally disabled. She makes a great deal of noise, beginning early in the morning and running into late at night - moving around in her apartment, slamming doors and cabinet, playing with her cat. I've had to put up with it for years.

In recent months, she's begun making a banging sound that begins early in the morning and occurs sporadically throughout the day. It's disturbing and annoying at all times, but she's been doing it earlier and earlier, and she's been waking me up. I'm in dreadful state to begin with since the violent phone confrontation with Rhonda several weeks ago - I've been having trouble eating and sleeping, I've lost a great deal of weight, I'm in a constant state of agitated exhaustion. I'm obviously in a state of post-traumatic stress. I'm going back into therapy because of this woman and her staff. I'll probably be going on medication. I have been taking medication to help me to get some sleep.

Two days ago, I was woken up at 5:56 by the banging. I told Jill, the Director of Community Life, that if she didn't make this young woman stop, I would call in the police as I was forced to do with H., the man who used to run up and down the hall. She told me that the young woman had been spoken to by Andrea, one of the social workers, and that she would ask her to speak to her again. Andrea was ineffectual when she was head of the Social Services Dept., and I can't imagine she's become any more effective now that she's working part-time.

Yesterday morning, there was no banging, so I assumed she'd been spoken to. This morning, it occurred again at 5:22. I immediately emailed Jill to tell her I'd be calling the police, then left a voice message for one of the Community Service Officers for the Town of Brookline, to whom I've been speaking in recent months. Hopefully, he'll be able to handle it. If he can't, I'll have to begin calling the desk and asking them to send over uniformed officers. I don't relish the idea of calling the police on a developmentally disabled woman, but as per usual, they're leaving me no choice.

As I said in an earlier post, whenever an issue like this arises, if I can get the management to involve themselves themselves at all, the most that gets said is, "Won't you stop, pretty please?" By contrast, when they address me, they have no problem being threatening and abusive. Rhonda sent me that vile letter I described earlier, and Carolyn, the previous Property Manager who has since been terminated (not for abuse, about which Hebrew SeniorLife doesn't give a damn, but for stealing) threatened me with eviction. If one were to rank every resident numerically according to the management's willingness to address and solve problems, I'd be at rock bottom.

The management of Hebrew SeniorLife, in its hiring practices, couldn't care less about any level of competence. This organization is a haven for career social service bureaucrats, and they're all being paid handsomely for doing virtually no work. I'm convinced there's a good deal of nepotism going on as well; people here hire their friends. Again, it's time for the Jewish community of Boston to wake up and realize what's going on. They're being suckered out of millions of dollars per year, while the weakest and most defenseless members of the Jewish community are being ignored at best, abused at worst.

History of my attempts to to get Hebrew SeniorLife to comply with the law - Part 5

> I then approached Dorothy and asked if this was, in fact, the only offer she was going to make me. She replied, “Of course not; I would never tell you that!” She then suggested I look at the apartment again with Jim, the Maintenance Director, who has been my only friend in the administration over the past seven and a half years. He and I went the next day, and my previous experience was confirmed; the elevator was horrendously loud. The unit shared two walls with one of the elevator shafts, and as the elevator car rose, the entire apartment shook. Furthermore, while I was there, a man who was friendly with the previous tenant, who had been moved to Hebrew Rehab, came in to collect some of her belongings. She was an elderly woman who was hard of hearing, and he told me she used to complain to him about the elevator noise.

> I told Sue that regretfully, I’d have to decline the apartment. I then went to Dorothy to thank her for her consideration and to keep open the lines of communication. Her reply was, “Well, at least you tried – but I don’t see anything coming along in the foreseeable future, so you’ll just have to do the best you can” - then she dismissed me with a wave of her hand. She had told me this wasn’t the only offer she’d make me, but was now telling me, essentially, that it was. Again, this was Dorothy’s pattern – black one moment and white the next.

> I am now convinced the offer of an apartment was a calculated move on Dorothy’s part. For years, each mention of the promised apartment was deflected with rationalizations or ignored outright. When I involved the Fair Housing Officer and consulted my friend the Disability Commissioner and informed Dorothy that Center Communities was in violation of the law, an apartment suddenly materialized - however, it was in their other building, which houses a significantly younger population. I would imagine the apartments next to the elevators are more difficult to rent, as those who apply for residency in that building are far less hearing-impaired than are most of the residents in the building in which I currently reside. Furthermore, the apartment was on one of the top floors, directly below the machinery that ran the elevators, which added to the noise and vibration.

> I believe the unit was one that was difficult to rent, and that Dorothy’s rationale was that either I would take the apartment and they would have dispensed with the problem of renting it, or that I would refuse it and she would appear to have offered me a reasonable accommodation, thereby sparing her government involvement. As soon as I turned it down, she went back to her position of claiming an apartment would not become available for years.

> I had only one further conversation with Dorothy, which took place in January 2013. For nearly seven years, I have experienced an ongoing problem with both residents and caretakers removing my laundry from the washing machines and dryers, in violation of building regulations. As with everything else, this has been an issue with which various people in the management have refused to become involved, so I approached Dorothy about it. She told me it was unacceptable, that she’d investigate and put a stop to it. Of course, none of this was done, and the problem persists to this day.

> In the summer of 2013, Dorothy took a leave of absence to attend to her husband, who was dying. As soon as she left, her two right-hand employees, Carolyn and a fellow named Ron who was the head of Accounting, were terminated for fiscal malfeasance. They were sending Dorothy a clear message - don't come back. She resigned formally soon afterward. Hebrew SeniorLife pulled Rhonda from one of their other properties to be the "Interim Director", and as soon as Dorothy was officially gone, they made her the Director. As I've been describing in previous posts, I've fared no better under Rhonda. In fact, dealing with her has been a nightmare, and she has destroyed my health.

> In June of 2014, I had a conversation with another tenant, a woman of approximately my age, who had been living in the building for about three years. She informed me that she was in a studio apartment and was shortly being moved to a one-bedroom (which subsequently transpired). I asked her how long she had been waiting for the move; she told me it had been three years. As of the compiling of this document, I have been waiting for nearly seven.

> I now have proof of what I have suspected all along - that everything Dorothy Gay and her staff told me:

 - that transfers are against Center Communities’ policies,

 - that according to Mass Housing’s regulations, they’ve had too many non-elderly people in one-bedroom units and couldn’t accommodate me,

 - that a waiting list for one-bedroom units for non-elderly people had been established specifically to accommodate me, and that I was first in line,

was a deliberate and premeditated falsehood.

The behavior I have described in this series of five posts is typical of the manner in which Hebrew SeniorLife operates. These people are representative of the sort of career social service bureaucrats they hire. They care little-to-nothing for the health or comfort of the residents. Their main concern lies in preserving this cash cow.

History of my attempts to to get Hebrew SeniorLife to comply with the law - Part 4

In September and October 2012, I had two meetings with Dorothy Gay pertaining to the matter of moving me to a one-bedroom apartment, summarized below.

> Dorothy refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing on her part or on the parts of her employees. She attempted to frame everything that had gone on to that point, including Carolyn’s attempt to force me to pay $5,000 and her threat of eviction, as a series of misunderstandings. The most to which she would admit was that she hadn’t been as “on top” of the situation as she should have been.

>I had consulted a friend who had formerly been a Disability Commissioner for the Town of Somerville, of which Dorothy had been mayor for one term. This woman sat on the committee that drafted the Commonwealth’s guidelines for reasonable accommodation, and told me that Center Communities was clearly in violation of the law. I informed Dorothy of this; she was disinterested and claimed the offer of another studio two years prior had been a reasonable accommodation, which it obviously was not. This was one of Dorothy’s many attempts to deflect and to avoid dealing with the matter.

> She told me in the first meeting that she would be retiring in the spring and that she was making me a “promise” that she would have the matter resolved before then. In the second meeting, she was less certain she’d be retiring, but told me that if she did, she’d leave her successor a letter describing the situation so that I wouldn’t have to “start from scratch”. She did neither.

>Dorothy told me they were beginning a separate waiting list for one-bedrooms for non-elderly disabled people and that I was first on the list. Nothing was said about the fact that I was supposed to be placed on a waiting list two years prior, or that I should have been placed on a list four years prior after the meeting with Carolyn and Andrea. From my perspective, I’d been on a “waiting list”, whether real or not, for four years.

> She informed me that she wouldn’t be able to give me a one-bedroom apartment for the foreseeable future, as she was responsible to Mass Housing regarding quotas of people of various categories, and that they were already over the quota for non-elderly disabled people in one-bedroom units. Later in that conversation, I asked her, “As I’ve given you two doctor’s letters mandating a move to a one-bedroom apartment as a medical necessity, can you use those to justify the move to Mass Housing?” She replied, “Oh, I don’t have to answer to Mass Housing; I can do whatever I like!” This encouraged me; however, in the following meeting, she told me again that she couldn’t give me a one-bedroom unit because of Mass Housing and quotas. This was always the way with Dorothy – it would be black, then white, then black again.

> However, in spite of the conversations described in the previous paragraph, she also told me, in the first meeting, that they were preparing to offer another apartment to an elderly woman who had been complaining about her unit. They had already offered her two, which she’d declined, and were about to offer her a third, and Dorothy told me that if she accepted it, she would give me the apartment being vacated. Although the offer never materialized, this was illustrative of three things: that there was no substance to Dorothy’s excuses involving Mass Housing or to Sue Carlsen’s claim that they never allowed transfers, and of the fact that they have always been far more willing to accommodate others than to accommodate me.

> I asked Dorothy if, in the meantime, something could be done about the various noise issues. She replied, “There really isn't any way we can go to someone and tell them they can't do what they need to do", which was nonsense, as no one needs to be running up and down the halls at night or moving furniture and slamming drawers and cabinets at 5:00 AM or at midnight - certainly no one at the advanced age of most of the residents.

> These issues all remained unaddressed until late November 2012. At that time, the elderly woman above me had been going through a period of many months during which she was making a sharp, metallic sound over my head repeatedly during the course of a day, beginning early in the morning and continuing until late at night (which she denied doing). I had spoken to the management about this on numerous occasions, but they were unwilling to approach her or to become involved. At one point, it became especially egregious, so I approached Tammy, another social worker to whom Andrea had turned me over a few weeks prior (and who has since become the head of the Social Services Dept.), and who had been similarly disinterested in becoming involved in resolving any of these problems. I told her my mother had just died, I was in a depleted state and that something had to be done about it. Suddenly, a one-bedroom apartment materialized. I believe this was in response to what I had said to Dorothy earlier about reasonable accommodation, and the fact that I had involved the Fair Housing Officer. There were two caveats – it was in their other building at 1550 Beacon Street and it was next to the elevator.

> On the following day, I went to look at the apartment with Susan, the Leasing Manager. The elevators were extremely noisy; furthermore, Sue approached me in a manner that presented a number of problems:

   1. On the way there, she informed me that my monthly parking fee was being raised from $160 to $200. This complicated the matter further, as I wasn’t certain I could afford it, and if I had to give up my car, 1550 Beacon was too far removed from Coolidge Corner to be a readily accessible location for me.

   2. She told me, “I had to fight to get you this apartment!” which was, of course, untrue, because as I’ve described earlier, she had been resistant to moving me all along.

   3. She insisted upon an immediate answer. I was incredulous; they’d made me wait for five years and she was now insisting upon an answer in five minutes. My mother had just died, I wasn’t in a frame of mind to be making important decisions, they were offering me a unit with very real problems attached – and she wanted an answer right away (I’ve since learned that this is illegal; they are required to allow at least 24 hours for a decision to be made).

  4. She also told me, “This is the only offer they are going to make you! If you don’t take it, there will never be another!” At the end, she reluctantly agreed to give me 24 hours to make the decision.

History of my attempts to to get Hebrew SeniorLife to comply with the law - Part 3

> In November 2010, a friend had someone who worked in the administration of Hebrew Senior Life call Carolyn and Dorothy Gay. They both refused to waive the fee.

> In December 2010, I spoke to a case manager at Brookline Housing Authority. She spoke to Dorothy Gay, the Director at the time, who agreed to have me placed on the waiting list for a one-bedroom unit, and told her I could expect to wait about six months for my name to come to the top. She also informed the case worker that the $5,000 turnover fee applied only to market rate tenants, not to Section 8 tenants. Dorothy declined to comment about Carolyn’s earlier insistence that I pay the fee, and avoided discussion of it afterward.

> Over the next several weeks, I twice approached Susan, the Leasing Manager, to ask if Dorothy had spoken to her about placing me on the waiting list, and was told she hadn’t. I informed her that Dorothy had told the BHA I could have a one-bedroom apartment, and was supposed to have told her to place me on the waiting list. Her disapproval was apparent; she told me, “We NEVER do this”, which was obviously untrue, as they had a policy in place of charging $5,000 to do it. She told me she’d speak to Dorothy about it. I never received a reply from either of them.

> At that point, lacking both other options and funds, I consulted an attorney whom a friend had asked to take on the matter. In March 2011, the lawyer and I met with Dorothy. Throughout the meeting, she was condescending and disinterested. It was clear she had no understanding of the situation nor did she wish to have any. She had no interest in discussing events that had led to that point; she simply wanted the meeting over. She offered me another studio and agreed to place me on the waiting list for a one-bedroom apartment, but made it clear it was merely a formality and that I would be on the list indefinitely. The lawyer declined to address either this issue or the issue of her employees’ former duplicity. I subsequently declined the studio apartment, as it was obvious that Dorothy was offering me the unit not to transition me into a one-bedroom, but to avoid having to give me one. I knew I’d have to continue to pursue it and that her response would be: “We gave you another apartment; what more do you want?” I felt it was in my best interest not to place myself in that position.

> The only thing that came out of the meeting that was even potentially in my interest was that Dorothy agreed to give me a letter stating that I was on the waiting list for a one-bedroom unit. I felt it was a meaningless gesture as Dorothy had communicated to me that I would be on the list indefinitely, but in any case, the letter never materialized.

> A few weeks after this meeting, an incident occurred in which H. was running up and down the hall at 10:00 PM, as had been his custom for the four and a half years I’d been living here. I was tired and exasperated, and shouted at him through my door to go back into his apartment. The next day, Carolyn sent me a letter accusing me of presenting “agitated outbursts”, and informing me that I was in violation of my lease and that if it happened again, I’d be evicted. She made no attempt to ascertain my version of the story or to discuss the matter with me in any way.

> In April 2012, I began working with the Fair Housing Officer and Americans with Disabilities Act Coordinator for the Town of Brookline. He advised me to submit a written request to Dorothy for a one-bedroom apartment based upon the legal requirement for reasonable accommodation, along with doctor’s letters indicating the need for a move, and to copy him on the request and to let her know that he was involved. I did so, which resulted in two meetings with Dorothy in September and October of that year.

History of my attempts to to get Hebrew SeniorLife to comply with the law - Part 2

> Several months after moving in, I began speaking with Andrea, who was then head of the Social Work Dept., about these issues. I approached her several times but she avoided involvement. At one point, after multiple requests, she reluctantly had a casual word with H., the man who ran up and down the hall. He denied engaging in his activities, and that was as far as it went. I also began discussing with Andrea the possibility of moving to another apartment, and I requested a one-bedroom unit for the following reasons:

   1. I’d be far less likely to hear goings-on in the hallway. In addition to the issues with H. and the caretakers, the elderly residents frequently shout at one another to make themselves heard.

   2.If someone above me were moving around at night, it would be more likely to take place in his/her living room, not above my head.

   3. My bed would no longer be next to the air conditioner, as in the one-bedroom apartments, the air conditioning unit is located in the living room.

> In April of 2009, I told Andrea I could no longer live with the situation as it was. She scheduled a meeting for both of us with Carolyn, the Property Manager, an extremely difficult and unpleasant woman who disliked me. The meeting lasted approx. 20-30 minutes, during which the following occurred:

   1. They told me they didn’t believe me about H., assumed I was exaggerating and refused to do anything to curb him.

   2. They refused to move me to a one-bedroom unit. They did agree, reluctantly, to move me to another studio, but told me I’d have to pay a $5,000 “turnover fee”. I was told the reasons for the fee were twofold:

      a) It served as a deterrent so that the elderly residents, who tend to complain, wouldn’t ask to be moved for frivolous reasons.

      b) It allowed them to recover their renovation costs (which was unwarranted; they did a fair job cleaning up my current apartment before I moved in, but they didn’t renovate it and it is obvious that they didn’t spend $5,000).

I asked if the fee could be waived; Carolyn told me it could not be. This was untrue; I have a history in property management and am aware of the legal requirement for reasonable accommodation (I also learned later that the imposition of this fee is in violation of both Center Communities’ policy and the law). They then told me to sleep with ear plugs. The meeting ended with no resolution.

> Shortly after the meeting, I approached Carolyn in her office and tried to discuss the matter further. She took offense that I was bringing it up again and became agitated and confrontational. I walked away and had no further contact with her for two years.

> A few weeks after the meeting, an inspector from the Brookline Housing Authority came for my annual inspection. I discussed this situation with him; he was upset about it and incredulous that they wanted to charge me $5,000. He urged me to speak to a case manager at the Leased Housing Dept. at BHA, which administers the Section 8 program.

History of my attempts to to get Hebrew SeniorLife to comply with the law - Part 1

I've been keeping a log of my experiences with Hebrew SeniorLife over the past seven and a half years. It's only a summary - it consists largely of bullet points - and it deals only with my efforts to wrest another apartment from them (not with my attempts to get them to address the various noise issues), yet it is still eight pages in Microsoft Word.

The first installment is posted below.

> I am 58 years of age, disabled with Depression, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and chronic pain, and receive disability benefits. I have a Section 8 voucher that makes me eligible for a one-bedroom apartment. Since October 2007, I have been living in a studio apartment, which was the only unit available when I moved in.

> Since I moved in, there have been numerous problems, the most prominent of which I describe below:

   1. An elderly woman occupies the apartment directly above me. She frequently has her television and radio on at full volume, and the sound carries into my apartment. Moreover, she’s extremely clumsy and lumbers about continually, slamming drawers and cabinets, dropping objects and knocking over furniture. As she has insomnia and almost never sleeps, it goes on for 24 hours per day. She’s grown progressively worse over the years, has become more agitated and frequently drops heavy objects over my head late at night and in the early hours of the morning. The home assistants who work for the woman in the next apartment have been disturbed by it as well. I’ve tried on a few occasions to speak to her about it, but (as is the case with many people in this building), she’s profoundly deaf and has significant cognitive impairment, and refuses to acknowledge that she behaves in this manner. The management has consistently refused to address the issue.

   2. A psychiatrically disabled man lives two doors down from me, and frequently runs up and down the hall at night for hours, talking to himself, arguing with imaginary people and slamming his door. I’ve complained repeatedly to the management, which has steadfastly refused to do anything about it. Moreover, he knows I’ve complained about him, and when we see one another in the hall, it’s extremely uncomfortable. For seven years, I’ve had to time my coming and going so as to avoid him.

   3. Within the past three years, a woman has moved in below me who has a habit of moving things around in her apartment during the early hours of the morning and making a tremendous amount of noise in the process. This generally begins 5:00 and 6:00 AM; however, it can begin as early 4:00 AM.

   4. Due to the layout of the room, in order to have my bed as far from the door as possible, I’m forced to have it next to the in-wall air conditioner. These apartments become extremely hot during the summer and retain heat; as a result, I have the a/c blowing directly on me during the night. This also interferes with my ability to sleep.

   5. Over the past year, two of the residents on my floor have begun to require around-the-clock care. Instead of hiring professional caretakers, their families have chosen to hire unskilled people who congregate in the apartments in groups and come and go repeatedly during the day, slamming doors, having loud conversations in the halls, shouting at one another and talking on their cell phones. They sometimes bring their children to work with them, and they run up and down the halls out of boredom. Other residents have been disturbed by these people as well, yet the management has done nothing to address the problem.

   6. For most of the past five years, I’ve had little-to-no hot water in the shower. The maintenance people have replaced the valve and adjusted it repeatedly, with little success. It appears to be a function of the apartment’s position in the building; I’m obviously on the same line with someone who is using an excessive amount of hot water. If I don’t shower by 7:00am, I have to wait until the afternoon for the hot water to be replenished. The maintenance staff has tried to diagnose the problem and repair it, but has been unable to do so.

As is generally the case with people who suffer from CFS, I have difficulty sleeping. The first five issues above have made it impossible for me to get enough rest. My depression has also become exacerbated. As a result of this situation, my physical and mental health have deteriorated dramatically over the past seven years.

For years, I've been getting up at 6:00 AM to do my laundry. I have to do it then, because it's nearly impossible to get a machine in the laundry room on my floor at any other time. The elderly residents' caretakers commandeer the laundry room during the days, and other residents commandeer it at night - one of them being the man who until recently was running up and down the hall.

There have been accusations that the caretakers are doing their own laundry, and this has been reported to the management, but with their typical aversion to any sort of involvement, they've simply said, "It's difficult to prove", and of course, nothing has been done.

It's actually against the rules to use the laundry room prior to 7:30 AM and they know I do it, but they won't say anything to me about it because then they'd have to address these other issues, and God knows they don't want to do that.

All these women do all day long is have meetings. It's unbelievable; whenever you go looking for one of them, she's in a meeting. I walk by the conference room, and I hear them in there, laughing and kibbitzing. It's a social gathering for them. They meet practically every day, yet nothing comes out of these meetings. No problems are solved, no issues are addressed. I have never seen anyone spend so much time engaging in meetings with an end result of doing so little.

Hebrew SeniorLife is nothing more than a cash cow for these people. They come to work, they socialize, they go home. The needs of the residents are of secondary importance, if they even make the list of priorities at all.

This is what the Jewish community of Boston has been subsidizing all these years. It is beyond time for something to be done about it. They take millions of dollars of your money every year, and they pay virtually no attention to your elderly mother or father. They simply don't care.

They've been pulling the wool over your eyes for decades.

Follow-up to the confrontation I had on the phone with Rhonda -

Two days later, she sent me a letter as an email attachment in which she accused me of behaving belligerently toward the psychiatrically disabled man who ran up and down the hall for years until I called the police. She went on and on about how I have no right to do this, that I'm required to go to them to handle these situations, and that they have gone out of their way to address my issues. This is, of course, a blatant falsehood. They have spent seven and a half years doing next to nothing about any of the issues I have brought to their attention - and Rhonda is well aware of this.

Also, of course, the incident never occurred. I replied and told her the circumstances of my two recent encounters with this man, which bore absolutely no resemblance to her description. All that happened was that I told him, in an even tone, that if he didn't stop running up and down the hall, I would call the police - then I did. As she always cc:'s her entire staff whenever she emails me, I hit "Reply to all", so that they all saw my response. She didn't bother to acknowledge it.

My friend who's been advocating for me has been threatening for months to go to Lou Woolf, the CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife, and every time he does, Rhonda tells him, "It's not necessary; I can handle these issues on my own" - which she clearly cannot or will not do. I think this business of telling me to call the police, then becoming angry that I did so, has her embarrassed and afraid, so she wrote the letter to cover herself.

What goes on in this organization is unbelievable. The entire Jewish community of Boston should be made aware of it.

I'm in mind of an incident that occurred last summer. I had a conversation with Rhonda, the Director, in which I told her, "Rhonda, I've given you example after example of your employees' apathy, incompetence and malfeasance. Whenever I do so, you handle it in one of three ways. If I give you an example of something that occurred  before you took over, you tell me, 'I can't speak to anything that happened before I got here.'" She exclaimed, "That's right, I can't!"

I said, "Fine. So now, I confine it to examples of things that have happened since you got here, some of them happening right now. You handle that in one of two ways. If I tell you over the phone, you pretend you haven't heard me. If I tell you to your face, you smile sadly and say nothing." Her reaction? She smiled sadly and said nothing. She does this whenever she's backed into a corner or confronted with evidence she can't refute. It's her go-to defense mechanism.

Shortly after I began dealing with her, about eight months into her term as Director, I was trying to impress upon her the apathetic nature of the staff she'd inherited from her predecessor, Dorothy Gay, who had been forced to resign the previous year (the circumstances of which are fodder for another post), and getting nowhere. I said, "Rhonda, why not try an experiment? Call your employees into your office one by one, and ask them, 'If this situation with this man is as egregious as I'm being told, why haven't I heard about it until now? Why didn't I hear his name until he walked into my office and introduced himself, eight months into my time here?' I guarantee you that not one of them will be able to give you an answer. Each of them will hem and haw, look down at the table and say nothing."

And of course, she smiled sadly and said nothing, and never did as I suggested. When I began our "dialogue" last summer, whenever I would mention anyone else on the staff, she would exclaim, "Oh, isn't she WONDERFUL!" She has a need to think that everyone and everything around her is just roses all of the time.

I now have to retain a lawyer because this woman is impossible to deal with. She never backs down and is never wrong. As I said in the previous post, Hebrew SeniorLife has done the residents of this facility - indeed, the entire Jewish community of Boston - a terrible disservice by placing this woman in charge. It is nothing less than a violation of trust.

They should be deeply ashamed.

Largest Nonprofit Organizations in Massachusetts - Boston Business Journal

From Boston Business Journal, September 2015:

Largest Nonprofit Organizations in Massachusetts

Hebrew SeniorLife is the fourth largest nonprofit in Massachusetts with revenues of over 200 million dollars per year, but apparently they feel they can't afford to make the accommodations I asked for, nor do they feel they can afford to hire competent, caring, qualified staff - in other words, people who would actually be willing to do their jobs.

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/subscriber-only/2016/09/09/nonprofit-organizations.html

The Director of Center Communities, the facility in which I reside, is a woman by the name of Rhonda. I've been dealing with Rhonda for a little over a year, beginning about eight months after she was hired for the position. Each issue I've brought to her (not that I've brought her much, as I could see early on who she was) has been handled the same way; she expresses faux sympathy and hands me off to one of her subordinates who does virtually nothing. As I mentioned in a previous post, both she and one of those subordinates encouraged me repeatedly to call the police, because they simply cannot be bothered to do their jobs.

Dealing with Rhonda over the noise issues and trying to wrest another apartment from her has been an ongoing odyssey of posturing, obstruction, deception and psychological games, and has been destructive to my health. After six months, I couldn't deal with her any longer, so my closest friend took over and began to advocate on my behalf. He's retired, but he used to employ Teamsters, and he has found Rhonda to be utterly intractable and impossible to deal with.

After months of our running around in circles with her, Rhonda finally offered me an acceptable apartment. I requested certain modifications, and she had the Director of Maintenance and myself perform weeks of research and legwork, implying that at least some of it would be done. She sat on the information for a week, then emailed me to tell me, "We're doing nothing", and presented herself as a saint merely for giving me the apartment (to which I am legally entitled) and performing the same renovations they perform in every other apartment in this 44 year-old building as people die or move out.

I was on the phone this afternoon in a conference call with Rhonda and my friend. Rhonda threw up roadblock after roadblock, refusing to make the slightest modification or to allow us to do so. Talking to her is impossible to begin with; she pretends to listen until it's her turn to speak, then she tells you, essentially, that she is right, you are wrong and its going to be done her way. Arguing with her is equally futile; she merely repeats the same things over and over like a robot, and seems to think she's somehow communicating. The tragic irony is that she presents herself as a listener, communicator and problem solver - and she is not even remotely any of these things.

As the argument progressed, I was getting pretty hot and was raising my voice. At one point, she said, "I'm trying to help you", which was a baldfaced lie because our "relationship" has become purely a pissing contest. I said, "Yeah? Then why don't you deal with any of the noise issues I've brought you over the past year, instead of telling me to call the police?" I then started to say, "And by the way, the police are appalled that you're telling residents to call them instead of dealing with these issues in-house" (which is true), but I only got as far as "The police are appalled... ", at which point she interrupted me and said, icily and in an accusatory tone, "I WISH you wouldn't call the police."

Well, I lost it. I shouted at her, "YOU told me repeatedly to call them! Jill [the Director of Community Life, the subordinate to whom Rhonda handed me off months ago] told me on at least two occasions, 'I support your decision. I ENCOURAGE you to call the police. We think of the police as our partners!'" I then said to my friend, "This is the reason I wanted to go directly to Lou Woolf [the CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife] six months ago. This woman has been full of bullshit from day one. She is a world class phony." Rhonda then got her hackles up because I was calling her out, and said, "If you're going to talk that way... ." I hung up on her.

My friend called me about ten minutes later and told me, "I worked on her from the moment you got off the phone, but she wouldn't budge." I said, "I suppose she didn't admit any wrongdoing in telling me to call the police, then behaving as though I were at fault for doing so." He replied, "Hey, she isn't going to change who she is." No, she isn't.

I'm turning the entire thing over to an attorney, and he can go to Hebrew SeniorLife's upper management. It's time they were forced to confront the horrendous mistake they made in hiring Rhonda. She's in way over her head; she has terrible administrative and personal skills and Hebrew SeniorLife has violated the trust of the residents of these buildings and their families by placing her in this position of authority.

The development in which I reside is Center Communities of Brookline, which is a division of Hebrew SeniorLife. It is a cluster of three buildings erected over forty years ago by a family who sold it to HSL about twelve years ago at a huge profit. The buildings are terribly constructed; any corner they could cut, anything they could skip, they did. Hebrew SeniorLIfe has made a few improvements since they purchased the property, but not many.

There is no insulation in the walls of my 44 year-old building and the floors are spaced more closely together than code would probably allow for today, and sound travels in a manner I’ve never seen in another apartment building. This has exacerbated the many noise issues I’ve had.

A few months ago, a young woman who lives diagonally above me began making a loud tapping sound. It begins as early as 6:00am - it’s woken me up on more than one occasion - and continues periodically throughout the day until late at night. There is also a loud “thunk” that comes from her apartment at all hours that startles the hell out of me, and I never know when it’s coming. I have no idea of what she’s doing to make either of these sounds. The head of maintenance has heard the tapping as well as he’s walked the halls in the morning, and has reported it to the management.

Recently, I complained in writing to the Director of Community Life (everyone here is a “Director”), who told me, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will share with the social service team and [the head of maintenance] to come up with a plan to speak with her.” Of course, as is typical, absolutely nothing has been done. This is how they operate; they do nothing and wait for problems to resolve themselves.

Another issue is that people are allowed to remain here far longer than they should be. There are many elderly people in advanced stages of mental and physical deterioration who belong in nursing facilities, or at the very least, assisted care facilities. I tried to discuss this with the Director of the facility last summer, when she had been here for about a year. She told me, “This is Independent Living. Independent Living means that people are allowed to make whatever decisions they wish about their own care, whether or not they are decisions with which you or I would agree.”

I told her, “That is NOT what Independent Living means. In an Independent Living facility, people are supposed to remain only as long as they can do so with relative independence. They can have help, of course, but when they require care all day every day, they’re supposed to be moved on to assisted living facilities, and when they require around-the-clock care, they’re supposed to be in nursing facilities. You are selectively interpreting the principles underlying the Independent Living model in order to rationalize your fear of confrontation.” Of course, she was having none of it. She smiled condescendingly, shook her head and said, “No, that’s what Independent Living means… .” She has absolutely no idea of what she’s talking about or what she’s doing.

Last year, I found a woman with advanced Alzheimer’s sitting in a chair on my floor in a state of confusion. She was convinced the building management had stolen her furniture and was searching for her daughter. I had to walk her back to her apartment on another floor. I got on the phone with the daughter, who told me, “They [the Social Services department] are supposed to be monitoring her.” I told her if she was waiting for the social workers here to do their jobs, she’d be waiting for a long time. She replied that she now understood as much, and would have her mother’s caretakers come in for longer hours, but the woman clearly needed to be in an Alzheimer’s facility. I told the management about it, and of course, again, they did nothing.

Apparently, doing nothing is the default state in the social services industry these days.

Another serious issue involves the quality of home care the elderly residents are receiving. There is an organization called HomeWorks that is somehow affiliated with Hebrew SeniorLife. They have an office here in the building, and for years, they’ve hired out most of the residents’ caretakers. However, increasingly over the past couple of years, residents’ families have been hiring unskilled, untrained women, mainly from Haiti, to serve as caretakers because they can hire them for far less than they can hire professionals. These women are essentially babysitters, but the families don’t appear to care as long as they’re cheaper.

The problem is that these women have no idea of how to behave professionally, and don’t care to learn. They make a tremendous amount of noise by slamming doors, having frequent, loud conversations in the halls, talking on their cell phones, etc. Occasionally they’ll bring their children to work with them, and they’ll run up and down the halls out of boredom. When you ask them to try to keep the noise down, they resent it terribly; they glare at you and say nothing. This disturbs a lot of people and complaints have been lodged, but - need I say it again? - the management looks the other way and refuses to intervene.

Until recently, there was a 104 year-old woman in the apartment next to me. She was bedridden and wheelchair-bound, and barely aware of what was going on around her. She should have been placed in a nursing facility years ago, but for some reason, her daughter was reluctant to do so. About two years ago, the daughter hired a number of these unskilled women, and they came and went in shifts around the clock. There were never fewer than two, and frequently there were three of them in the apartment at any time. I could hear them talking and laughing whenever I walked by; it was like a party for them. They came and went at all hours, slamming the door, making noise in the hall. I complained repeatedly and next-to-nothing was done. On two occasions, after I'd complained profusely, someone from the management reluctantly had a quiet word with one of them, but nothing changed and I was told, “We can’t do any more because these women don’t work for us”, which is nonsense, because as I mentioned in an earlier post, they not only have the legal right to intervene under the terms of the contract each resident is required to sign, they are legally obligated to do so. I’ve tried to explain this to them on numerous occasions, but they simply don’t want to hear it.

A few weeks ago, the head of the Social Services Department (who does absolutely nothing here as far as I’ve been able to determine) asked me, “Have you noticed a difference now that E. [the 104 year-old woman] is gone?” I said, “E. is gone?” She said, “Oh, she didn’t die! They placed her in a nursing home.”

Now, it was a stupid question for her to ask me in the first place, because she was acknowledging implicitly that they had done nothing about the situation in over a year of my complaining; however, I merely said, “Well no, I haven’t noticed a difference, because in addition to all of the other noise issues with which I’m dealing, the woman in that apartment [I pointed to a unit diagonally across the hall] has a similar situation with caretakers going on.”

She replied, “A. has around-the-clock care? I didn’t know that!” Of course she didn’t; it’s only her job to know. Letting that one go as well, I asked her, “Where did they put E.?” She then froze momentarily. It was now a privacy issue; she didn’t know whether or not she should tell me, so she merely smiled and said, “Someplace nice!” I said, “Good, I’m glad it’s ‘someplace nice’. It should have been done two to three years ago”, and as I turned to walk away, she said, “Well, if the family can afford around-the-clock care, we can’t… .” I just kept walking.

This is their knee-jerk response to every problem, great or trivial: “We can’t.” It’s nonsense, of course, because again, they have the legal right and obligation to act, but they resist doing so at every turn. The half-dozen women who pretend to run this facility do no work; all they ever do is have meetings. Whenever you go to look for one of them, she’s in a meeting, but nothing ever seems to result from them. The levels of apathy and incompetence here are unparalleled; I’ve never seen anything like them.

These people are lucky to have jobs, but even so, they simply refuse to do them.

Of the many noise issues I’ve had over the course of my seven and a half years of unfortunate residency in this facility, one of the most egregious involves a mentally ill man whose apartment is two doors down from mine. He has a habit of running up and down the hall at night, having conversations, and occasionally arguments, with imaginary people. It’s horribly disturbing, it interferes with my ability to get enough rest and the stress has contributed to the overall destruction of my health.

I have been telling the management for years that this man belongs in a psychiatric facility, but they refuse to become involved. This is their preferred method of dealing with problems; they ignore them and hope they resolve themselves. On the rare occasion I’ve been able to get them to address this, they’ve reluctantly had a word with him, but the result is always the same. He never stops entirely, but he scales it back for a week or two; then, when he thinks no one is paying attention, he resumes his activities.

In recent months, I’ve begun telling Hebrew SeniorLife’s management that I intend to begin calling in the police to deal with this, and both the Director of the facility (who never addresses anything herself but consistently hands me off to one of her subordinates) and the Director of Community Life, to whom she handed me off some months ago, have encouraged me repeatedly to do so. (She had originally handed me off to the head of their Social Services Dept., whose job it is to deal with these issues, but she made a couple of half-hearted gestures then handed me back to the Director. She simply didn't want to be bothered with me.) They actually want me to bring in the police to do their jobs for them, and there is no hint of shame or embarrassment in their voices when they tell me this.

Although this man’s nocturnal activities usually occur three nights per week on average, occasionally, something will set him off, he will become exceptionally agitated and will do it several nights in a row, and sometimes in the afternoons as well. This has been the case recently. This last Friday night, after I had warned him the day before that I would begin calling the police, he began one of his nightly sojourns, and I made good on my threat. I called them and they sent a uniformed officer.

The officer told me he had only been to this facility on two previous occasions, but he was aware that others in the Police Dept. have been here frequently. I informed him that HSL’s management had encouraged me repeatedly to call the police. He expressed surprise that an organization that manages a facility for the elderly and disabled would encourage its residents to call the police on one another. I told him this is how they operate; they tell residents, essentially, “Call the police, because we can't be bothered to do our jobs.” He also expressed the opinion that these issues are better handled in-house, rather than by the police. I told him I agreed with him, but as they have refused consistently to deal with the issue, I have no other option.

When I told him this has been going on for seven and half years, he asked me if it would just be easier to get them to move me to another apartment. I told him I had been fighting with them to get them to do that for years, and that they had finally offered me another apartment but only as a result of being threatened with litigation.

He also suggested this man might be better served in a different kind of facility. Again, I had to tell him I agreed, and had been telling the management as much for years, with absolutely no result. There are, in fact, many people here who would be better served in other facilities. In particular, the management has a practice of allowing elderly residents to remain far longer than they should, sometimes for years past the point at which they should be moved to assisted living, nursing or Alzheimer's facilities. Some become bedridden or wheelchair-bound, barely conscious, dependent upon around-the-clock care given by unskilled caretakers - babysitters, really - who are engaged by their families because they are able to hire them more cheaply than they can hire skilled professionals.

In any case, the officer went upstairs, spoke to the man and was able to get him to stop running up and down the hall. He told me if it happened again to call back. He also told me that he would inform the Community Service Officer, who handles domestic disputes and with whom I have also been in contact, and suggested that I inform both the Community Service Officer and the building management of his visit. I have subsequently emailed several parties within management, telling them that my intention is to call the police each time this man acts out.

Although I will maintain the Facebook group as a support venue and to protect people’s anonymity, I intend to use this blog and the Facebook Community page to post stories of my past and present experiences with Hebrew SeniorLife, in an effort to make the public aware of how the organization is run.

Why have I created this blog?

Hebrew SeniorLife is an organization in the Boston area that owns and operates nursing homes, rehab facilities and housing for seniors and the disabled. It is the largest operation of its kind in the area, but tragically, it is a horribly run organization - a corrupt, self-serving agency that has for decades been betraying the trust of the Jewish community of Boston.

Although Boston’s Jewish population is relatively small, it is disproportionately affluent, and as Hebrew SeniorLife is one of our flagship nonprofits, the Jewish community gives it many millions of dollars per year. Unfortunately, that money is not returned to the community in the form of services. HSL does tend to keep up its properties (although even that is relative, as I understand similar properties in other cities are in much better condition), so they can take their wealthy donors around and show them what they’re doing with the money. Apart from that, they use it to provide their upper management with six-figure incomes and generous retirement packages. When it comes to hiring the people who are responsible for the care and welfare of the residents - middle management, nursing staff, social workers, program directors, etc. - they scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel.

Hebrew SeniorLife has caused a great deal of suffering over the years by victimizing weak, vulnerable people who are unable to defend themselves. The organization has been threatened from time to time with litigation, but it has a history of paying off the parties so as to avoid damage to its reputation. I assume they feel it is less costly in the long term than hiring competent, caring staff.

I am disabled and have been a resident in one of their facilities for nearly eight years. I have had terrible problems here, both with the apartment itself and with neighbors in varying states of physical and mental decline making egregious levels of noise 24/7, which have caused my health to deteriorate to a point at which I am more debilitated now than I was when I moved in. HSL’s staff has refused repeatedly to deal with these issues, even though they are legally obligated to do so under the terms of my lease, and have encouraged me to call in the police to handle them as they cannot be bothered to do their jobs. They have also, until recently, refused to give me another apartment, although they are legally obligated to do that as well under the terms of the reasonable accommodation law. They have been apathetic at best, abusive at worst and at all times incompetent.

Twenty years ago, my grandfather was in their rehab and nursing home facilities. He also was subjected to abuse, and although he was quite elderly, I feel confident that it shortened his life. It certainly made his final months more difficult and unpleasant than they needed to be. This is a set of problems that are pervasive throughout the organization and that have been going on for a very long time. There is absolutely no interest in improvement or change within their organizational culture.

I recently began threatening the Director of my facility with litigation, and as a result, after seven years of fighting and avoiding dealing with all of the issues I've brought to them, she has finally begun to talk about offering me another apartment, but what has been offered has been unsuitable and has been presented with a tremendous amount of posturing and with unreasonable restrictions attached. At no point has there been any acknowledgment of culpability or wrongdoing on their part.

Many people here are unhappy and have been for most of the twelve years since HSL purchased the property. Many complaints are lodged, but nothing changes. I have therefore started this blog to serve as a support venue for anyone who is or has been, or has had a loved one who has been, a victim of Hebrew SeniorLife.

I would be interested in hearing the stories of others who have been similarly harmed, and in comparing notes pertaining to legal and governmental resources, etc. Even if you're merely disgruntled or have a low opinion of the organization in general, you're welcome.

In addition to this blog, I’ve set up both a Community page and an anonymous support group on Facebook. The Community page is open and unrestricted. Membership in the group must be requested and the identities of its members are visible only to others within the group. If you'd like to join, message me through this blog or the Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Victims-of-Hebrew-SeniorLife/1603719693173867