Following up on our post from yesterday about the awning coming down at the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Avenue B and East Fifth Street ...
We asked Patricia Krasnausky, president and CEO of Cabrini Eldercare, for more details on the closing. Via email yesterday afternoon, she noted that Cabrini took down the awning (and other signage) because they were worried that the new owner "might handle it badly."
[Via Twitter]
As for the closure: "All of the residents will be moved by the end of this week, and then the rest of the employees," she said. "We will turn it over [to the new owner] on the 30th. We had a closing liturgy and reception last Friday."
The last resident is moving out today. The man, a former garment worker for Montgomery Ward who has lived on the Lower East Side Side since 1953, will be transferred to a facility in Borough Park in southwest Brooklyn.
There isn't room at a facility anywhere closer. He's on several waiting lists. In a message last night, his daughter, who grew up with her mom and dad on Clinton and Delancey, said that "staff and families have been crying all day. I'm so angry right now."
As previously reported, developer Ben Shaoul, the building's new owner, will convert the health care facility for elderly patients into residences, either condos or rentals. Plans to sell the Center to a for-profit operator never materialized.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Claim: Ben Shaoul is the new owner of Cabrini nursing home, will convert to condos
Report: Local politicians reach out to Ben Shaoul as re-sale of the Cabrini Nursing Center seems likely
More details on Cabrini's closing announcement
Q-and-A with Patricia Krasnausky, president and CEO of Cabrini Eldercare
12 comments:
This is so sad and says so much about what is wrong with this country...when old, settle people are uprooted from their home, and for what? To whose advantage? Because "we can't afford" to keep housing them as they have been?
Mayor Bloomberg was on the scene to denounce this obscene uprooting of citizens for the private wealth hoarding of an individual - oh wait, Mayor Bloomberg was not on the scene to support the citizens, sorry about the confusion.
I just don't understand why the major NY media hasn't really gone after Shaoul. He's a great story, given that he is an embodiment of all that has gone wrong in NYC the past decade, plus he is an epic douche, which always makes for make copy. There is nothing to like about this guy from about a hundred angles. Why is the curtain not being pulled back?
Wouldn't it be just great if all the clueless, rich frat boys and girls that move in here have the same misfortune of getting the boot in their old age with no one to be your advocate.
It's shameful really. Imagine being in your 70s or 80s and some a-hole is telling you to scram and make way for the younger and more affluent.
Some people think they are free of karmic debts but the bill always comes due.
This is absolutely sickening; don't really understand how the city administration doesn't step in to protect some of it's most vulnerable citizens - if they cannot be bothered to do this much, then what use are they at all?
The lack of available space at any other facility is the direct result of the cap placed on the number of nursing home beds. I can't find a direct (.gov or .ny) source right now but there's an interesting comment on this from a Standard & Poor's analysis of a Belgium-based company that has a large portfolio in the nursing home segment there (so it's not just NY or US that does this; the aged are considered expendable in Europe also apparently):
http://www.cofinimmo.be/media/49201/full-analysis.pdf
"Risks are also partly offset by secured payments made by social security, and strict regulation, which limits the number of beds allocated by area. Therefore, if one operator defaults, product scarcity means Cofinimmo could rapidly find a new operator, although rents could fall in such
a case."
@Anonymous 9:50 AM: they probably will experience what you hope they will but the future misery of frat boys is unfortunately of no benefit to the dependent aged folks living now under these awful conditions. We must do something now to help, can't wait for karmic payback.
As I've said several times before, my family lived on the street for over 50 years. Every time I see a piece of it torn away my heart rips a little bit more.
I remember getting trouble on an almost daily basis as a kid for playing WWII in the ruins of the old Loew's Ave B theater which used to stand on this spot. Those are memories I'll always have with me. :-)
Son of a gun, Shaoul called me back. He was on the defensive side -- with good reason, I must say.
He put much of the Cabrini home's fate on Rosie Mendez and the community board in failing to take up the cause, and of the general futility of nursing homes that are dependent on federal and state reimbursement for their survival.
I wasn't in any position to make an argument against his, so for the time being I must give him the benefit of the doubt when he says "It's always blame the guy with the deepest pockets."
Who is behind the family trust that owned this building and sold it out from under Cabrini?
I did come across the names in this or another blog (The Lo-Down?), but I think a commenter in one of the other stories, as well as what I've heard myself elsewhere, Cabrini didn't have the money to buy it outright. I can't vouch for the veracity of that info. The commenter said they negotiated with the trust for 2 yrs, too. I'm not judging if they could've gotten the money to buy, because I don't really know. I'm just repeating what I've read and heard.
No Story has made me sadder than this one. Shameful and despicable.
Remembering living @ 60 Ave B, directly behind "The American Nursing Home"
From 2am to 5am, every morning, well not on Sundays ,garbage trucks, delivery trucks would do their buisness,; leaving their vehicules "ideling" spewing noxios fumes into our and our neighbors ramshaclled abodes.(One Of our main reasons for moving from that local)
Every 4th of July they would throw a party, featuring an all purpose wedding, barmitzva, etc band, called THE ELECTROLIGHTS or something like that; who had a disco/funk kind of sound, some relative of an employe for sure.
They would wheel out the old folks, serve watermelon, and pretty much the staff would party. It was kind of sad seeing the old folks, stuck in their
wheel chairs, trying to push the amplified sound from their ears... I remember, one time the MC saying , with no sense of irony " Do you know who old Mister Blue Eyes was????' And the band kicked up; "AND NOW THE END IS NEAR, AND I FACE MY FINAL COUNTDOWN" I'm sure they didn't mean to be cruel, they were just idiots....
For years we would here screemes late at night. Finally, tripping on mushrooms it became clear "HAROLD, GET ME OUT OF HERE"
It's a shame that this community can't support a full spectrum of human needs, except for the most entitled.....
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