New Haven Independent

It appears that the Home has some fence-mending to do in order to gain approval of a law that would enable the cherished 93-year-old institution sell its 169 Davenport Ave. building in the Hill to the Amistad Academy charter school.

“We all made it clear we are withholding judgment,” said New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney, in whose office the Wednesday afternoon meeting occurred. “We made no commitments. We’re concerned with the loss of beds in New Haven.”

“I think they’ve handled this in a very curious fashion,” said Mayor John DeStefano, who expressed reservations about the plan.

The Home’s board president, Louis Goldberg, said Thursday the group recognizes that “we did make mistakes. We are working very hard to work with the state, the city, and the union” representing the Home’s workers to resolve people’s concerns.

The Jewish Home wants to move many of its patients to modern, home-style five new 10-room 35,000 square-foot “green” buildings near the Jewish Community Center campus in Woodbridge. Its Jewish patients’ families have long left the Hill neighborhood, many for suburbs like Woodbridge, Orange,Milford and Bethany. The Home also wants to maintain beds for urban Medicaid patients within city limits at other sites, perhaps the Hospital of St. Raphael.

Click here to read an article detailing all those ideas.

Because of a state moratorium on new nursing home beds, the Home first needs a law passed allowing it to move. Then it needs permission from the state Department of Social Services (DSS) on all the specifics of the plan.

The Home’s first political error: It contacted two suburban state senators, Gayle Slossberg of Milford and Joe Crisco of Woodbridge, to introduce the bill, without checking in with State Sen. Toni Harp, who represents the Hill, or with other New Haven lawmakers. That had Harp, for one, peeved.

“They did apologize” at Wednesday’s meeting, Looney said.

Looney, DeStefano, and, in an interview earlier this week, Harp, all said they also question whether New Haven can afford to lose more nursing-home beds. The city has lost 446 beds since 1996, 240 of them when Atrium Plaza closed.

DeStefano complained that at Wednesday’s meeting the Home wouldn’t offer details of its plans — even which town it hoped to move beds to — even though, he said, officials had spoken publicly about the Woodbridge idea with some legislators.

“They have some legacy issues here. They have a responsibility to” indigent citydwellers who have filled many of the current Home’s beds, DeStefano argued.

“There is no way I would support” moving, say, half of the Home’s 226 licensed beds out of town, DeStefano said.

There is no official plan at this point, or any hard numbers. That’s because there can’t be a plan until, first, Slossberg’s and Crisco’s bill gets passed; and then DSS decides how many beds can be moved where. Goldberg stressed in an interview earlier in the week that the Home is ready to proceed with any plan DSS comes up with, any combination of urban versus suburban beds.

Several factors have propelled the Home’s plans. The Jewish population, the core of the institution’s mission, has long left the Hill neighborhood. Some suburban families prefer not to place relatives and come to visit them in the Hill.

Also, the thinking about how best to care for the elderly has changed. The Home wants to provide more of a home-like setting than an institutionalized setting, with licensed nurses and aides where regular work clothes, not uniforms, and people living in small clusters in smaller buildings with common areas. Also, the Home wants to help more seniors stay in their own houses or apartments by expanding outpatient services.

The Home has also promised to transport its current unionized workers to the Woodbridge site in vans if they need rides.