A 96-year-old California woman was given a three-day eviction notice from her senior housing complex, given the choice between paying $110,000 or being evicted from the apartment she'd lived in for 22 years.
Jean-Jacques said he signed a lifetime lease with California-Nevada Methodist Homes in 2002 and planned to live out the rest of his life at Forest Hill Manor nursing home in Pacific Grove, California. KSB.
She secured the place with a $250,000 down payment and paid $5,000 in rent a month until her savings ran out.
Things got complicated when California-Nevada Methodist Homes filed for bankruptcy and sold the property to Pacific Grove Senior Living in 2022.
The for-profit senior housing community purchased the property with a clause that it would honor previous contracts of tenants who had signed lifetime leases, and Jack expected that would be honored.
But Pacific Grove Senior Living's parent company, San Diego-based Pacifica Senior Living, sent the 96-year-old woman an eviction notice on Aug. 16, telling her she would be evicted if she did not pay $110,000 within three days.
“It was a shock,” said the spry senior, “I moved into Forest Hill Manor to be taken care of for the rest of my life.”
Jack and the senior advocates discovered that while her previous policy was covered under an exception, the insurance that would have guaranteed she could live in the same room until she died did not.
“She put all her savings and all her money into this facility,” Bob Sadler, president of the Pacific Grove Senior Living Residents Association, told KSBW. “I don't care what the legal ramifications are. This is morally unthinkable.”
Sadler told the outlet that “lifetime care” agreements like the one Jack signed in 2002 were considered unconditional only with the previous owners, not Pacifica Senior Living.
But Elizabeth Campos, project manager for the elderly advocacy group Alliance for Aging, told the outlet that the eviction notices had not been approved by the California Department of Community Care Licensing, the state agency that oversees these facilities.
Campos also claims the notice did not tell Jack how to challenge the eviction.
“It really pisses me off, and when I see that it's an elderly person, it pisses me off,” Campos told the outlet. “Where is this person going?”
Campos and others are fighting to get Pacifica Senior Living to do the right thing, honor their original agreement and allow her to continue living in the unit she's called home for the past 22 years.
The facility's business office has not contacted Jack since receiving the eviction notice.
According to KSBW, the Seniors Alliance and the Residents' Committee have attempted to contact the office but have not yet received a response.
The Post has reached out to Pacific Grove Senior Living for comment.
Jack, who turned 96 in July, says he has no plans to leave his home.
“I'm not going. They're going to have no choice but to bury me because I have nowhere to go,” she declared to KSBW. “They have all my money.”
