Tenants To Be Displaced Amid Changes At Terraces

ORLEANS – On Nov. 4, tenants in the independent living facility at The Terraces were encouraged in writing to attend a meeting two days later.

 “The letter said only that we were having a meeting on Thursday afternoon, and please try to be there,” said Elizabeth Hogan, one of the independent tenants. “There was no agenda. There was no hint.”

 At that Nov. 6 meeting, the 16 independent tenants were notified that their units were being converted into a new memory care wing, and that they had until the end of January to find somewhere else to live. A letter from Attorney Michael Pierce dated Nov. 6 that was shared with The Chronicle said that impacted tenants have until Jan. 31 to be out of the senior living community on Daley Terrace.

 In a press release announcing the change, the Terraces said plans are for the new 27-bed memory care unit to be up and running by the summer of next year. The community’s skilled nursing facility, which houses an additional 33 beds, will not be changed. 

 The Terraces said in the release that the pivot to memory care is being made to bring “much-needed housing and support for local residents suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.”

“Seemingly everyone has been hit with the crisis of a loved one facing the challenges associated with Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive issues,” Matt Muratore, co-founder of The Terraces’ parent company, E.F. Senior Care, said in the release. “Finding high quality care and a safe environment at an affordable price is a lifesaver for families in need.”

 In a separate letter sent to impacted tenants, The Terraces pledged to support them in their search “for suitable and affordable housing on the Cape.”

“By providing nearly three months' notice, we hope you will have ample time to locate such housing,” the letter read.

But Hogan said news of the impending changes caught her and other tenants by surprise.

“I think their business plan is sound,” she said. “I think it makes sense. Who can protest that? They can do what they want. But it was really about how they treated the residents.”

 Janet Winter, 99, has lived as an independent tenant at The Terraces for the past eight years. She said at the Nov. 6 meeting, tenants greeted the news with mixed feelings of confusion and frustration.

 “You’re just swallowing your anger,” she said. “My son used to say, ‘Oh, ma, it is what it is.’ And he’s right. It is what it is, and you deal with it.”

 Terraces Administrator Karen Blake last week said that The Terraces and E.F. Senior Care moved quickly on the decision to repurpose the independent living quarters upon getting approval from the company’s bank on financing the project.

 “When I first found out, the first thing I did was call all my contacts to say that this is happening and ‘what can we put together for our residents here?’ Because I’m dedicated to making sure that every one of them has a good place to go in the most organized fashion possible,” she said when reached by phone Nov. 14.

 Blake said she has worked one-on-one with each of the independent tenants to help situate them for their impending moves. Representatives from other local assisted and independent living facilities have visited The Terraces to meet with residents, she said. They have also invited tenants to tour their facilities. On Monday, tenants were taken by limo to one facility for lunch, she said.

 The Terraces is also offering to cover the cost of tenants’ moving expenses up to 150 miles away from the independent living facility, Blake said. That includes situating them with movers who will also pack up all their belongings if needed. Some nearby facilities have also offered to help tenants in the moving process, she said.

 “We’re helping in any way that we can,” she said. “We realize this is an upsetting situation, but we’re doing everything on our end that we can.”

 Blake said as of Nov. 14, approximately half of the 16 independent tenants had been set up with units in other facilities within a few miles of The Terraces. That includes Winter, who plans to move to the Victorian senior living facility in Chatham next month. 

 “I didn’t want to go too far afield,” she said. “My niece is here in the summer, so I wanted to be somewhat close to her.”

Winter said her new two-room unit will be smaller and more expensive than what she currently has at The Terraces. The move from independent to assisted living often comes at a higher cost due to the increased level of care, Blake said. Otherwise, those tenants maintaining their level of care in a new facility are getting comparable pricing.

For some tenants, Blake said, the move from independent to assisted living elsewhere is more in step with the care they’ll need moving forward. Winter said while she’ll miss the autonomy she had at The Terraces, assisted living may be a better fit for her looking ahead.

“I think I’m going to need it,” she said. “I’m not getting any younger. I’ll get my meals and laundry and stuff like that, so I like that.”

At 76, Hogan is among the younger tenants in the independent facility. She said she’s in talks with a property owner about renting a house locally. If that happens, she said she “will be one of the lucky ones.”

“People are moving to places they feel pressured to move to,” she said. “I’m not going to be living on Route 28 in Yarmouth.”

 Blake said while the news was initially met with surprise by residents, efforts to place tenants in new homes has so far “gone wonderful.” She said she anticipates that all 16 tenants will be able to be housed on Cape.

 “I think the initial shock, it’s scary,” she said. “But I think people have a completely different outlook now that they’ve had the time to process.”

 But Hogan and Winter each said that while inevitable, leaving The Terraces will be hard.

 “This was a good place to live,” Hogan said. “Nothing is perfect, it was a good place to live. And the people who were living here had every intention of staying.”

 Winter said the process of moving, packing up things and deciding what to take and get rid of, has been difficult. Even more so, she said, is the thought of losing the friends and relationships she’s made at The Terraces over the years.

 “You come here and live here this long, you make good friends with a number of them. Now they’re all going to be scattered away,” she said. “We had our own little community, our own visits from the church and our own church service. Now it’s all gone.”

 E.F. Senior Care, which is based in Plymouth, purchased The Terraces in 2021 from the Meade family, which founded the senior living community in 1969. 

 “It’s annoying because the owner in the beginning, who built the place here, was very oriented toward providing a home for people that needed a nice place to retire into,” Winter said. “They were very concerned about keeping people satisfied and happy. Now it’s just down to money.”

 Blake said she could not speak to how the shift from independent living to memory care will impact The Terraces’ and E.F. Senior Care’s financial bottom line. But she said that the increased services that come with memory care can cost tenants more.

 But Blake said that the move toward memory care allows a better “continuum of care” at The Terraces, where memory care residents can more seamlessly transition to the neighboring skilled nursing facility if and when needed. She said the transition, while difficult, is a necessary one to keep up The Terraces’ standard of senior care.

 “I have a relationship with all my residents over there,” she said of the independent tenants. “It’s hard, even for me. But I know they’re going to a good place. They’ve already invited me over there when they get settled in, so I think we have a great relationship with them to be able to do that.”