Mary Schmich’s article “Seniors who thought they’d found home facing a move” from Sept. 27 announced to the public what residents of some Presbyterian Homes properties learned recently: The tenants of three subsidized buildings owned by that “faith-based nonprofit” would be forced to find other housing by November 2016 because the organization is selling the buildings in which they live.
For years residents of Presbyterian Homes’ “market-rate” houses have been making donations to the organization’s Geneva Foundation with the understanding that their funds were going, at least in part, to the residents of these other subsidized housing properties.
As Schmich’s article noted, Presbyterian Homes “is shifting its focus to the market-rate senior homes it runs in the north and northwest suburbs.” In fact, at least one of its properties, Lake Forest Place, is presently undergoing a remodeling that many of the residents consider unnecessary — or at best overdone. In the face of their dissatisfaction, those residents have been told that the upscale changes are “the current trend.” Clearly the focus has turned from them to the next generation of retirement home prospects.
Perhaps those at Presbyterian Homes who are directing the refocus think that baby boomers don’t know or won’t care about the fate of those in subsidized housing who must now face the uncertain future of finding a place to live on limited funds.
Perhaps baby boomers don’t care.
The present frenzy of marketing in the area of retirement living seeks to assure us that we will live forever in comfort and serenity, in the latest style and free of all pain and financial concerns. But it behooves all of us who are being courted so vigorously to remember that in this market culture, even in the nonprofit area, we too will one day become a generation that is economically unattractive.
— Aimee B. Anderson, Chicago
