All agree new veterans home must feel homey

Veterans groups, lawmakers, and state and federal veterans agencies have differing ideas about what a new veterans home should look like. But they all agree it needs to feel like home.

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About a year ago, the state Department of Veterans Affairs announced that the crumbling, 60-year-old Little Rock Veterans Home would close and the 70 residents would be forced to move.

Now state and federal officials are working with veterans interest groups to decide where to build a new facility, what it should look like and who it should serve.

Department spokesman Kelly Ferguson said residents and staff members of the now-closed facility felt like a family, and the department wants to recapture that.

“We do want to foster community, and we do want there to be a home-type atmosphere,” she said.

American Legion Cmdr. Mary Erdman, who is on a task force that’s considering the matter, said the camaraderie at the former facility is one reason it’s important for the state to build a new veterans home.

“That wasn’t particularly because of the building. It was just the veterans being together,” she said.

She said the state provides fewer veterans services than surrounding states do, so once stakeholders have agreed on a plan, Arkansas may get priority for federal approval. Stakeholders have already outlined what they’d like to see in a new facility. Their considerations have ranged from the home’s proximity to hospitals to how large the administrator’s office will be.

“We are so under served in Arkansas. That’s why we think, with our application, we won’t have to wait as long,” Erdman said.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that there are 252,279 veterans in Arkansas. About 35 percent of them live in central Arkansas.

In Pulaski County alone, there are an estimated 32,808 veterans.

While the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs certifies state veterans homes and provides grants to build them, it is up to each state to operate and manage the homes, and to determine who is eligible to receive their services.

Each state has at least one veterans home, and many states have more than one, according to the National Association of State Veterans Homes. No state surrounding Arkansas has fewer than three homes. Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas each have seven; Louisiana has five; and Mississippi and Tennessee each have three.

Arkansas’ veteran population was similar to that of Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma in 2011, according to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.

BEEBE INTERVENES

Last May, Gov. Mike Beebe appointed Cissy Rucker, a retired Army National Guard colonel, to replace Dave Fletcher as the state Veterans Affairs Department’s director after problems surfaced at the state’s veterans home. The Little Rock facility was losing money, food bills had gone unpaid for months and the department had illegally collected about $600,000 in fees from the home’s most disabled veterans.

By state law, the Little Rock home could not accept Medicaid patients and relied on state and federal funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. For years, the Fayetteville Veterans Home, which can legally care for Medicaid patients, supplemented the Little Rock facility.

Weeks after being appointed director, Rucker ordered the Little Rock home to close as soon as residents could find new places to live.

Some veterans groups initially advocated keeping the veterans home open, saying that the residents shouldn’t be evicted.

But sentiments changed after the release of a report showing that it would cost an estimated $10 million to repair the home’s collapsed sewer lines, a failing electrical system, a leaky roof, and inadequate heating and air systems.

Ferguson said some of its residents moved to the Fayetteville home. Others moved in with relatives or into nursing homes.

“At the end of the day, it was up to them and their families where they were going to be located,” she said.

A PLACE TO LIVE

Act 165 of 2013, which allows for creation of a new veterans home, leaves it to the department’s director to decide where the new facility should be located, with input from the Arkansas Veterans Commission and a new 22-member Veterans Home Task Force.

Ferguson said department officials would like the home to be near a veterans health facility.

“We would like it to serve as many as possible, and we would like it to be in a place where any health-care needs could be met,” Ferguson said. “The population is highest in this central Arkansas area.”

The task force - made up of veterans groups, lawmakers, and agency heads and staff members - will submit recommendations to the state Legislature by Oct. 31. Included in those recommendations will be information about how many veterans will likely live in such a facility, what services should be offered, possible locations and ongoing funding.

Task force member Mike Hampton, who is with the Arkansas Veterans Coalition, said he’d like a single-story facility where interaction is encouraged.

“This facility cannot be a place where we send veterans to die. It’s got to be a place to go live,” he said. “It’s got to be a place where veterans are surrounded by other veterans.”

Hampton said he volunteered at the Little Rock veterans home for years and saw how the residents enjoyed the walking area, covered outdoor space and garden.

“Those things would be really nice to have in the future,” Hampton said.

The state Department of Veterans Affairs submitted an application April 12 for $18.1 million in federal matching funds to build the home.

Lawmakers budgeted $7.5 million in state surplus funds for the state’s share of construction costs. Whether that money will be available will not be known until this summer. The federal funding is contingent upon the state collecting its share.

In addition, state lawmakers budgeted $7 million for the home from a cash fund, which is a dedicated pot of money that comes from fees or tuition or other money not collected as a tax and isn’t a part of the state’s general revenue.

Arkansas has until Aug. 1 to notify the federal government on whether all of the state-budgeted money for the home has actually materialized.

‘A WONDERFUL PLACE’

The application submitted by the state Department of Veterans Affairs on April 12 includes seven goals for the new veterans home, which the application states will be in North Little Rock. Those goals can be amended, Rucker said. The department inserted the North Little Rock location only because the department has a clear plot of land near the North Little Rock Veterans Cemetery that can serve as a place-holder until a location is chosen, Rucker said.

The application states that Arkansas wants to serve up to 150 veterans and create a state-of-the-art facility with rooms that can be adapted to future technological, and environmental and other changes.

The application stresses that the state wants to avoid an institutional-type facility, and include outdoor spaces such as gardens. Veterans Commission Chairman Tom Thomas said it will emphasize the homey feeling.

“It’s a wonderful place to go to, to continue living, and we owe that to our veterans,” Thomas said.

Instead of a traditional dormitory-type building, the department would prefer to build several cottages that would each house up to a dozen patients and a nursing assistant, Rucker said. People who need similar kinds of care, such as for dementia or post-traumatic stress disorder, would be grouped together.

Other states offer similar housing. She toured some of those facilities.

“They were really, really lovely places,” Rucker said. “They get to select what time they get up. It’s not wake up at 5 o’clock, the way so many things are now. You get to select what you want to eat, you have choices. But it’s one of those things of, can we afford it?”

Several members of the task force said they would prefer that the facility be a single story, for safety and mobility reasons.

“Usually when they end up in a place like that, they have some limitations,” Erdman said of residents.

The application also states that Arkansas wants the facility to be in a safe location with adequate parking so it can attract and retain staff members and residents.

It refers to the previous veterans home as being in a high-crime area, “which made resident safety and staff recruiting difficult.”

Now, to reach the old three-story brick building, visitors have to drive miles over buckled pavement past dozens of boarded-up homes.The chain-link fence circling the property is rusted and in leaning. A swing with light green cushions sits out front under a white birdhouse atop a pole, which is home to the property’s only residents.

Despite multiple attempts by the Arkansas Building Authority to sell the property, no one has bid on it, Authority Director Anne Laidlaw said.

As for the planned new facility, “You need a place that is reasonably close to the VA hospital,” Hampton said. “You don’t want to be somewhere where it takes you two hours to get to care.”

The application states that the new home will be within 10 miles of the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System’s Eugene J. Towbin Healthcare Center in North Little Rock and within 15 miles of the system’s John L.McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock.

Alexander, Bryant, Maumelle, North Little Rock and Sherwood fall within that radius. Rucker has said she has visited potential sites for the new home in Benton, Brinkley, England and Jacksonville.

The federal government also has conditions that the facility must meet.

For example, rooms must be equipped for adequate nursing care, as well as the comfort and privacy of residents. Residents’ rooms need to accommodate up to four people and must have at least one outside window, have appropriate bedding and mattresses, be near a toilet, and have individual closet space with clothing racks and shelves. The facility must also appear as much like a home as possible, and be in a residential area near medical-care facilities, community activities and transportation.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/12/2013

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