The Department for Housing and Urban Development, more commonly known as HUD helps to provide affordable housing for hundreds of thousands of seniors across the country. Most of those seniors live in subsidized senior apartments or independent living communities that offer very limited assistance, if any. This can be problematic, because seniors will develop care needs at their age. Seniors who rely on HUD subsidized housing will often remain in their low rent senior apartments because of they can’t afford private pay assisted living, and using Medicaid to pay for assisted living can be not only difficult (because of lack of funding and waiting lists), but unpleasant because of onerous restrictions on the people who use Medicaid to pay for assisted living (such income confiscation, requirement that all assets be depleted to $2000, and unavailability of private living spaces).
While there are a small number of HUD subsidized assisted living facilities already in existence, one being the Village at Oakwood in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, there is recognition that there need to be more. HUD recently announced $26 million dollars in funding for grants to help subsidized senior apartment operators convert their apartments into assisted living facilities for low income seniors. Some of the assisted living communities will even offer Alzheimer’s and dementia care.
And one of those grants has already been awarded. According to a Bizjournals.com article, Fowler Christian Apartment in Dallas, Texas recently received a $2.4 million for just this kind of conversion, and will soon be transforming into an assisted living facility.
This is the first of many such projects; conversions like this be taking place in cities through the U.S. The HUD grant program is exciting because will help fill a disappointing gap in the availability of housing and care of low income seniors in need of assisted living care.
