When a change in ownership within some of the largest players in the nursing home industry is described in the news as a “blockbuster move”; and when an earnings call to investors raises the specter of “even further upside potential” without any mention of superior care, quality of life, increased standards, greater accountability and better medicine, it is not nursing care. It is a different animal altogether, the savage world of publicly traded horse-trading.
It is worth noting here, that some of the parties cited in the article below are owners and operators of some of the worst rated nursing and rehabilitation facilities throughout the United States. Thus, shareholders to whom this article was addressed, are to some extent investing in substandard care. That’s just one part of the human tragedy. Another part of the human tragedy, cited in an earlier article below, tacitly admits that one methodology for adding shareholder value is manipulating the more lucrative sides of benefits from acute care patients “who also come with more lucrative Medicare and private insurance coverage than the typical long-term nursing home resident on Medicaid.” Statements like that should upend the comfort of Medicare and private insurance carriers.
Mayor de Blasio ducked questions Friday about the firing of Ricardo Morales, the whistleblower who’s suing the city for his termination in the wake of the Rivington House scandal.
Morales was canned from his post at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services in 2017, a year after the scandal first came to light.
The controversy centered around the city’s lifting of deed restrictions on a Lower East Side nursing home, which eventually paved the way for its sale to a private developer for $116 million.
At the time, de Blasio denied any involvement in the firing of Morales, who has maintained that City Hall was directly involved in the removal of the deed restrictions. Morales filed his lawsuit in February 2018, claiming that he was terminated because he wouldn’t go along with covering up City Hall’s involvement.
In a March 25, 2016 email submitted as evidence in the case, de Blasio wrote to top advisor Emma Wolfe about Morales.
“I spoke to Dom,” de Blasio wrote at the time, referring to advisor Dominic Williams. “This is about the riccardo morales issue. Pls follow up with Dom.”
Around that time, DCAS Commissioner Lisette Camilo was emailing with Williams about Morales’ fate at the agency, court records show.
To continue reading at The Daily News, click here.
Comedian Elayne Boosler visited her cousin Dorothea Buschell in Brooklyn’s Hamilton Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in August 2018. Photo: Courtesy of Elayne Boosler
Dear Reader:
The following story, one partially told on Facebook and to The City by comedian Elayne Boosler, is a developing story and one we will cover in depth. When we started this blog in 2016 one of our goals was to draw attention to the deplorable treatment of the elderly and most vulnerable at the hands of nursing home owners and managers. Our intent was to uncover the depth of the depravity of some owners and managers of many of the world’s nursing homes, particularly those in New York and New Jersey, who choose profit over care, bottom lines over human life and lined pockets over dignity.
There can be no greater example of that choice than the story of Elayne Boosler’s elderly Jewish cousin who died in the care of an Allure nursing home, which had in 2015 obtained custodianship over Boosler’s cousin, despite the existence of a living relative. Ms. Boosler’s story is shocking insofar as her cousin was not only denied a dignified death but a dignified burial. While Covid-19 may have played a role in the absurdity of the story that follows, it does not tell the whole story and cannot be used to mitigate the responsibility of the owners/managers of the nursing home that not only deprived Ms. Boosler’s cousin of her family, but of a Jewish burial.
There can really be no greater indignity and no more astonishing tragedy.
When Ms. Boosler’s cousin died (allegedly) of Covid-19, instead of being buried in a Jewish cemetery with all of the Jewish rites and customs which had been provided to the nursing home, she was interred in a Christian cemetery at an astronomical fee.
Boosler’s story is not surprising to those of us who have been following nursing homes in general and Allure in particular. What is surprising, however, is the ease with which nursing homes can obtain guardianship over the elderly in their care. As legal guardians, these nursing homes and long-term care/rehabilitation facilities have access to finances, decisions, medical choices and ultimately the life and death of those in their care. And most do not do the due diligence required before obtaining guardianship. Or, they simply falsify statements and records. Moreover, it is not even clear that such due diligence is ever required or if there is any oversight, particularly in New York where the systems in place have run amok.
Once guardianship is obtained whether legitimately or otherwise, as this story suggests, decision-making authority on burials and interment among all of the other life-shattering decisions, rests in the hands of the court-appointed guardians. They are free to throw caution and care to the wind.
The Boosler story, raises questions about New York’s Guardianship Services, which in the Boosler case, remains something of a mystery. We are hoping that some law enforcement agency will take the bull by the horns and look into this case as it is neither unique nor surprising. We are hoping that Boosler’s status as a entertainer will light a fire under those who should be investigating the treatment of the elderly in nursing care and long-term facilities.
There is money to be made in human life and in death and apparently once guardianship of a family member is “signed-over” to a nursing home moral and ethical compasses can shift. The elderly deserve better.
Comedian Elayne Boosler says her elderly Jewish cousin, who died last month, inexplicably got saddled with a pricey Christian burial package while in a Brooklyn nursing home.
“Now my beautiful Jewish cousin is clutching rosary beads after a fake funeral that never — couldn’t have — happened because of coronavirus,” Boosler, who grew up in Sheepshead Bay, told THE CITY from her California home.
She noted that her first instinct was to “go for the funny and try not to bleed on my audience, if you will. Also, going for the joke is how I distance myself and my emotions.”
But she confessed she hasn’t slept in days.
“I am horrified at how she must have died,” she said, “at how she was swindled and at how she is now far from her family in a strange grave.”
‘Are You Sitting Down?’
The ordeal began, Boosler recalled, when her cousin Harriet Saltzman phoned her from Florida on April 14 and said, “Are you sitting down? Pull the chair closer to the table in case you fall over.”
Saltzman told her that she had been trying to reach their mutual first cousin Dorothea Buschell at the Hamilton Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to wish her a happy 83rd birthday.
When no one answered in Buschell’s room, Saltzman said she began leaving voicemails at the main number, but no one returned her calls for weeks.
Finally, on April 14, a frazzled staffer who happened to pick up the phone said, “Oh, no one called you yesterday? Uh, she died this morning.”
“And then Harriet said, ‘Why would someone have called yesterday if she died this morning?’,” Boosler said.
Buschell died April 13.
The Hamilton Park Nursing and Rehabilitation CenterBen Fractenberg/THE CITY
By the time Saltzman called, Buschell’s body had already been transferred to Forest Green Park cemetery in Morganville, N.J. — not her intended, already-paid-for, family plot in New Montefiore Cemetery in Farmingdale, L.I. She was buried on April 15.
“Because they figured it was the virus that she died from, there was no autopsy,” Saltzman wrote Boosler in an email. “She was double bagged, put into the coffin, doubled bagged again and shipped.”
Saltzman noted that Forest Green “will not be able to dis-inter her for a while because of the pandemic, and they will call me when they are ready to do it.”
The Plot Thickens
In a phone interview with THE CITY, Boosler added, “But wait. There’s more. Much more.”
The saga began in either late 2016 or early 2017, Boosler recounted, after Buschell, an artist who had taught English on U.S. Army bases in Italy for a quarter century, landed in Hamilton Park after a series of mini-strokes.
On April 28, 2017, she was sold an irrevocable $15,000 pre-need funeral plan which she never signed — and which Boosler stressed Buschell never would have consciously agreed to since she already had a family plot.
Space is being cleared for a large new development—almost an entire block long—in Bed Stuy.
Located at 270 Nostrand Avenue, it fronts Nostrand, Dekalb, and Koscuiszko Street. The property was the former home of CABS Nursing Home Company, which was established in 1973. Beginning in 2009, the facility began operating at a loss, according to the owner in a court filing, and began to look for a buyer who would keep the nursing home open.
City records show that NNRC Properties LLC, which is part of the Allure group, bought the property from CABS for $15.6 million in June 2015.
But their plans, unbeknownst to CABS, included building apartments on the property. In October 2015, they filed permits for a seven-story development, which was approved later that same year. Current renderings show a plain facade, one side colored white and the other a lighter shade of brown.
CABS sued the developer in 2016, claiming “they lied about plans to keep the home operational and instead moved patients out with the intention of turning the building into apartments,” according to a story in DNAinfo. They sought to rescind the sale while asking for “more than $30 million in damages.” In 2017, the fraud claims were dismissed.
Allure Group is also behind the controversial Rivington House nursing home sale in Manhattan, where they were accused of similar actions.
De Blasio May Want to Be President. What Do His Donors Want?
His fund-raising for a possible White House bid raises ethical questions, again.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s flirtation with a White House run has generated virtually no interest among voters. One national poll in March found he was the only Democratic candidate with a net negative approval rating, though fewer than half of those polled had any opinion of him at all.
But his potential candidacy has caught the attention of people who do business with the city. They’ve been donating to the mayor’s presidential political action committee, the federal Fairness PAC, his latest vehicle for raising money from powerful interests.
Mr. de Blasio’s lowly showing in the polls didn’t, for example, dissuade John F. Fish, the chief executive of Suffolk Construction, a Boston-based company, from hosting a fund-raiser last month for the mayor’s PAC. Mr. Fish’s company is clearly hoping to expand its business in New York — Suffolk recently hired Shola Olatoye, who led the city’s public housing authority until last year — and may see an opportunity to win favor with a current mayor and future presidential candidate.
What’s disconcerting, however, is why Mr. de Blasio would welcome such donations, given the risk of even the appearance of impropriety, not to mention the fact that his fund-raising has raised ethical and legal questions since he first ran for mayor in 2013.
A donor to his first mayoral campaign pleaded guilty to bribing him to get favorable lease terms for a Queens restaurant. Federal prosecutors indicated that they didn’t charge the mayor because the Supreme Court had recently narrowed the scope of what could be considered corruption.
A donor to one of the nonprofits the mayor has used to advance his liberal agenda and raise his profile pleaded guilty to charges involving bribery after receiving special access to Mr. de Blasio and city officials.
The city’s Department of Investigation found that the mayor violated conflict of interest rules by soliciting donations for his Campaign for One New York from people seeking favors from the city, as the news site The City recently revealed. (The rules would not apply to the presidential PAC.)
That’s not to mention the Manhattan district attorney’s announcement in 2017 that the mayor’s fund-raising for the Democratic campaign to win the State Senate in 2014 violated the “intent and spirit” of campaign finance laws by directing contributions meant for political committees toward specific candidates.
Fund-raising can taint City Hall by giving the appearance of pay-to-play, even if none is involved.
In 2015, the city lifted a deed restriction that allowed a Lower East Side nursing home that once served AIDS patients to be converted to condos. Among those who had pushed for the deed change was the lobbyist James Capalino, who steered $40,000 to Mr. de Blasio’s 2017 re-election campaign and $10,000 to the Campaign for One New York. Mr. Capalino has said that the client he worked for who sought the deed change fired him in 2014 after he was unsuccessful, and that he wasn’t involved in the issue afterward. City Comptroller Scott Stringer investigated the land deal and blamed it on mismanagement by city officials.
Mr. de Blasio, who is barred by term limits from seeking re-election, is using his federal Fairness PAC to pay for his travel to states like Iowa and Nevada, which will be important if he runs for president. Mr. de Blasio has said the group will not accept contributions from anyone in a database of those doing business with New York City, a stricter standard than the federal rules the group must follow.
Continue reading the New York Times by clicking here.
The firm behind the Rivington House sale is building a 243-unit project
UPDATED, Nov. 7, 5:03 p.m.: Allure Group, the real estate developer at the center of the Rivington House nursing home scandal, is filing permits to build a luxury rental project on a site that also houses a Brooklyn senior facility.
The firm and its partner Landpex Development are looking to build a 30-story rental property at 2266 Cropsey Avenue in Bath Beach, according to documents filed with the Department of Buildings on Wednesday.
Allure and Landpex filed the permits under alternate addresses 2230 Cropsey Avenue and 1625 Shore Parkway. City records show a rectangular site, which runs the length of Cropsey Avenue between Bay 23rd Street and 23rd Avenue and is home to the King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, a facility that provides long-term care for seniors. Allure told The Real Deal that the filing is not for the site of the senior facility. It is for the adjacent parking lot it also owns and a row of houses beyond. The company also said that the senior home will remain open, and that it plans to invest $10 million in the property.
The new plans call for a 243-unit residential complex that spans 222,300 square feet. The proposed structure will be divided between 196,000 square feet of residential space and 26,300 square feet for a community facility. If approved as proposed, the building would be 326 feet tall. Amenities would include a fitness room and recreation area for tenants, a pool, a men’s spa and an outdoor lounge on the 23rd floor. There will also be a community day care facility on the ground floor.
Allure acquired the property for $30.1 million in 2015, property records show. It was previously owned by the Sephardic Home for the Aged. The firm took out a $55.4 million mortgage on the property last June.
Allure, headed by Joel Landau, was a central figure in the Rivington House scandal. It paid a $2 million legal settlement following an investigation by then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into the sale of the deed-restricted Lower East Side nursing home. It sold the building for $116 million in 2015 to Slate Property Group, which had planned a luxury housing development at the site.
Landpex’s Joseph Flakowitz hung up the phone when asked about the project.
Allure Group, a for-profit consortium of rehabilitation centers, has purchased what was called the Sephardic Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Bensonhurst. The property sold for $30.1 million on Dec 31, according to public records filed with the city on Tuesday.
The site at 2266 Cropsey Avenue between Bay 32nd Street and 23rd Avenue, sold by Sephardic Home for the Aged, is comprised of 83,388 square feet, according to PropertyShark.
Under Allure’s ownership, the facility is now known as the King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation. The company runs four other facilities across Brooklyn, one in Queens and one in Manhattan, according to its website.
“We are excited to extend our group’s reach to a new neighborhood in Brooklyn,” said Melissa Guglielmo, Allure’s chief operating officer, in a press release. “We’re proud to show a new community what we are all about.”
While less hyped, southwest Brooklyn has dramatically increased its volume of real estate activity recently, as Commercial Observer previously reported.
Based on Sephardic Home for the Aged’s website, the facility was a non-profit organization whose mission was to care for the Jewish elderly. The site was also used as a space for community meetings, such as jobs information nights listed on the Bensonhurst Bean. The status of the non-profit is unclear, though it shares the same address and phone number as King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation.
Both Sephardic Home and Allure Group declined to comment.
In the debate between Cynthia Nixon and Andrew Cuomo last month, the discussion briefly turned to the issue of homelessness. Cuomo touted his career-long dedication to housing, beginning with a nonprofit he founded in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Nixon blamed the state’s housing crisis, in part, on the governor’s close ties with the real estate industry.
“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that we have one of the largest housing crises that we’ve ever seen in this state when the number one contributor to Andrew Cuomo is the real estate industry and corporate developers,” Nixon said.
In the lead up to Thursday’s primary, candidates for two crucial state offices — governor and attorney general — have taken aim at the real estate industry’s role in politics. Campaign contributions from the industry have loomed large in both races. For instance, Attorney General candidate Zephyr Teachout has refused donations from corporate developers, and Letitia James refunded a $10,000 campaign contribution from a controversial landlord. In the governor’s race, Nixon has criticized Cuomo’s top donors — which included more than $700,000 from real estate in the first half of 2018 — and called for dramatic housing reform, including universal rent control.
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Money talks
The past three years have thrown the influence of real estate in politics into sharp relief with the conviction of two of the most powerful men in Albany. Earlier this year former State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate majority leader Dean Skelos were both re-convicted on corruption charges. Both cases involved leveraging relationships with landlords and developers who, at the time, were lobbying the officials on issues important to the real estate industry, like the 421a tax break.
John Kaehny, executive director and a founding board member of good-government group Reinvent Albany, said given that the real estate industry was at the center of both scandals, there should be even more interest in how donations from real estate impacts elections. He said state elections are especially vulnerable because limited liability companies are treated as individuals rather than corporations. Until rules are reformed, real estate will continue to wield considerable sway over statewide elections, he said.
“This is really a basic matter of money versus people,” he said. “The LLC loophole and the fact that it essentially allows unlimited contributions, allows real estate executives to flex their muscles in extraordinary ways.”
LLCs have become a preferred vehicle for bypassing state campaign contribution rules, especially for real estate companies which often create LLCs for each new development. Under state law, individuals can donate up to $44,000 to candidates running for statewide office, while corporations are capped at $5,000. The state legislature has tried on at least three occasions to hold LLCs to the same restrictions as corporations.
“We’ve passed it in the assembly several times, and then, it goes nowhere,” said state Assemblyman Tom Abinanti, who has endorsed Nixon for governor. “It dies because it fails in the senate.”
As previously reported by The Real Deal, real estate donated more than $733,000 to Cuomo’s re-election campaign in the first half of 2018. His top donor during this timeframe was the Durst Organization, with $75,000 across four LLCs and James L. Nederlander of the Nederlander Organization with $65,000. Cuomo’s favored attorney general candidate, Public Advocate Letitia James, has raised over $280,000 from 80 real estate donors. But she’s also returned donations from certain landlords, including $10,000 from Joel Landau, whose firm Allure Group was at the center of the Rivington House scandal. Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney raised at least $433,000 in real estate contributions through the end of August. Teachout has touted the fact that she doesn’t take money from corporate developers and on her campaign website calls for a ramp-up in investigations into illegal tenant harassment, tax fraud and money laundering. She has, however, received $21,000 from multifamily landlord Arthur Cornfeld and L+M Development Partners’ Ron Moelis.
“Why has New York City real estate been able to be so dirty and so cruel for so long? The answer is developer money,” Teachout said during a press conference last month, according to Politico.
Her stance did not go unnoticed by the industry. In late August, Related Companies paid $100,000 to a political action committee that quickly spent the funds on a digital campaign that targeted Teachout, according to a report by Politico.
“The real estate industry is not monolithic. Like journalism and politics, it is not all good, or all bad and not the source of all society’s ills, no matter who says so,” said the Durst Organization’s Jordan Barowitz. “Difficult problems are complicated to solve and require thoughtful collaboration, because of this, scapegoating inevitably solves nothing.”
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LOSTMESSIAH 