Back in September, my mother’s living condition at Olathe Towers, operated by the Good Samaritan Society, a HUD facility, rapidly deteriorated due to her health. She had not done dishes in weeks, possibly a month. There were dishes piled all over in the kitchen, rotten food was sitting out on the kitchen countertops, fruit punch had been spilled all over the countertops, the kitchen floor, and the carpeting. The floors had not been vacuumed in weeks. Crumbs were all over the carpeting going through the living room. Makeup power was spilled all over the floor in the living room and was stinking up the department. Trash had not been taken out in well over a month. Her bathroom had bag after bag of used Poise pads and unlaundered clothing which was gaggable. You have no idea how bad her apartment was. My only excuse for not finding it sooner is because I had not been over there in several weeks due to my husband’s niece staying with us for another family emergency. In the meantime, my aunt was driving from north of the river to check in on her. I was notified about the condition of my mother’s apartment around the 4th of September by my cousin.
When completing cleaning, I didn’t dig deeper in into the deep spaces, such as the refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, pantry, closets, etc, because she would fuss anytime I would try to get into these areas. I didn’t want to upset her further by causing more of a confrontation between us, so I decided to get apartment management involved. So, in order to get these areas addressed, I contacted their front office. I spoke to an employee who stated my mother was in violation of her lease and that management could get someone up there to inspect and could issue an eviction notice. This would have been needed to get her into skilled nursing, which is what she needed for adequate care. She also suggested that I contact Johnson County Department on Aging for an evaluation. This employee also stated other people in the building had noticed her rapid decline, and she said she didn’t want to upset me, but she thought my mother needed hospice care. I agreed and further explained the problem with getting in hospice care.
My mother was a Christian Scientist. Therefore, she did not have a primary care physician and did not seek medical treatment at all for any of her health conditions. She was so radical that would not have stuck a foot in cold water if she thought it would reduce swelling. I knew she had a large lump on her breast that was medically untreated. Whether it was malignant or benign is known, because we are still waiting on the autopsy results. She had this lump for about 10 years or more. In addition, she had what I believe to be some type of rheumatoid disease that affected her joints, which meant she had problems walking normally for nearly 20 years. In the last 12 months, we believe she suffered a mini-stroke.
For about 50 days, she lost muscle tone in half of her face, could not write normally, and her balance was majorly affected. She had the writing problems and the balance issues until the day she died. About a year ago, I believe what set it off was a large infected area on the side of her head that swelled and drained for nearly two weeks, possibly an MRSA infection, but I will never know, I forced her into letting me apply tea tree oil to it, because there were not any other options at hand, and it eventually cleared up, thank God.
The Good Samaritan Society has skilled nursing, I had looked into seeing what steps needed to be taken in order to get her transferred to the unit without her consent (she was refusing to leave her apartment), and admissions stated she would need a primary care physician to sign off on it, Because she did not have one, she stated she would need to legally investigate what steps would need to be taken to get her into the unit.
The woman even went as far to say my mother would not have to accept medical care if that was a problem. All the facility would need to do is provide hygiene and food for her if she had a room there. But this was still a problem for my mother and her relatives that are Christian Scientists, because they never believed the facility would not force medical care on her. So when I explained all of this to the employee, she stated management had a responsibility to inspect her apartment if there were violations, because it clearly states how the apartment should be maintained per HUD standards. She was not only putting herself at risk but also others in the facility (e.g. cockroach infestations, bed bugs, etc).
I contacted Johnson County Department on Aging for an evaluation. It took them a couple of weeks to get out there, so my spouse and I did a lot of the pre-cleaning because we didn’t want her living in the hot mess. We cleaned the bathroom, the exterior of the kitchen, cleaned dirty kitchenware, vacuumed, and deep cleaned the carpet with our Bissell machine. We left the deep areas for the apartment management and the JCDA to inspect. When the Department on Aging came, they did not inspect the deep areas. They stated they would get her approved for cleaning services and the charity would come in to complete a safety inspection. Catholic Charities came in a week later. They stated all they do is surface cleaning, could come in for two hours a week, but would not start until October. Not much of a safety inspection to say the least. So, we relied on apartment management to get into the other areas to inspect.
Although I reported the problem to the apartment manager, from September 6th 2018 to 2-Jan-2019 (the day she died), she did absolutely nothing to get any inspector into her apartment to go through these areas. I only know this because I began cleaning out her apartment and saw the level of filth that was in the apartment.
When I opened up cabinets, absolutely every single kitchenware item was dirty. Dirty items were being stored away. So were the cabinets, completely filthy on the inside. She had also taken dirty kitchenware items and bagged them in the bottom of the pantry and hidden them under recycling plastic bags. Dirty kitchenware was found in with clothes under the bed and also in her closet. About ¼ of the items had black mold on them from decaying food. We began to remove food from the refrigerator, and we found some food was expired by 3 months. She had left so much food in the refrigerator that a person could not have noticed the condition of it, because it was completely covered. After we removed everything did we notice how bad it was. Spilled food, spilled congealed fruit punch in the bottom drawer. Worst of all, there were dead worms in the back of the refrigerator. They only could have come from two sources: Meals on Wheels or Payless Grocery Store in Olathe. Although we brought her food on a regular basis, there is no way those things came from our refrigerator. My guess is they crawled out of an unsealed container, such as Meals on Wheels, and then they died.
Catholic Charities came the day she died because I made a call. They had not been there in a month because their housekeeper was not showing up and then she quit. Don’t even get me started on Catholic Charities; they never even tried to get a replacement to clean her apartment nor did they notify Johnson County Department on Aging that they could not do the job themselves. If they had, they would have referred us to another cleaning service. That is a whole other complaint in and of itself due to failure to stick to cleaning schedules, failure to show up, and misrepresenting hours worked. So, the level of filth found the day she died in the deep areas can be verified through Catholic Charities final housekeeper. Plus, I took pictures.
I brought the apartment manager up to look at the problems. She seemed a bit concerned, I told her we were throwing away most of the kitchenware because I didn’t need the stress of cleaning it, and I brought up that she had been alerted to the problem back in September. She then offered to let me use their commercial dishwasher for the kitchen items. I took two grocery carts full of items downstairs. Many of the items could not be adequately washed and had to be pre-scrubbed up to four times before dishwasher loading. Other items had to be thrown away, otherwise, there would have been three grocery carts full of items. I am assuming she let me use the dishwasher because she was so embarrassed by her inaction. I doubt it was just because she felt sorry for me. When I turned in the keys, I told her I had left the refrigerator for them to clean because I wanted it thoroughly documented. When I reviewed the walk-through paperwork, she didn’t even list the condition of the refrigerator on it, although they charged $25 for cleaning it. She just didn’t want a record of how bad the place was. It was the only thing I left for them to clean that I could not do myself.
She did list the spills on the carpet and listed out mold on the carpeting and walls, but they must have been able to get it all out because these items were not charged on the deposit and rent refund check.
Finally, despite providing them with a will and name change paperwork, they issued the rent and security deposit refunds in my mother’s name. Prior to vacating her apartment, when the manager initially came in at my request, I was told whatever was left of the security deposit and rent paid for the month would be given to me. Never was it said that my mother’s name would be written on the check. Plus, I personally had to sign my own name to verify the property’s condition as well as vacating paperwork. Legally, of course, I cannot sign my mother’s name to a check because I do not have power-of-attorney. So, to get the check cashed, a probate attorney would need to be hired. Because the check is for $644, probate didn’t even make financial sense.
This is all the money left other than the TOD on her checking account which was for about $1500. Despite continuing to complain about the check and offering documentation showing I was entitled to it legally (she left all of her property to me and the will should have been sufficient as well as their allowance to let me clean out her apartment and to sign vacating paperwork), management at this location continued to refuse to issue the check in my name and stated it would just go to unclaimed funds at the state level. I even offered to sign the check back over to Good Samaritan Society as a donation so the money would not go to waste and the manager refused.
I continued to complain right up to a written complaint to their corporate office. I spoke to a district manager. I told him everything included in this complaint. He apologized for the confusion and stated the check would be issued in my name. I have this in writing. He also used the excuse that they are not an assisted living facility which is why they didn’t get involved in the mess in her apartment. Seriously. The mess was a HUD violation. How they do not understand that is breathtaking.
My husband and I have agreed that it all gives the appearance that they just wanted to sit on the rent and desposit refunds in order to enrich their own bank account and that I'd just give up. In addition, $300 of the deposit should have been issued back to my mother 2 years ago; it was a pet deposit, and my mother’s dog died. Management was notified when the dog died, most of the other residents in the building knew, and no one came to her apartment to complete an inspection in order to issue a refund. I only personally found out about this when she died, because the manager stated she knew my mother’s dog had died but could not find paperwork in the file that she completed an inspection.
She said she would have to research if a check had ever been made out. In the meantime, I tried to get bank statements from Commerce, my mother’s bank but was largely unsuccessful because they stated I was only a TOD. Instead, I had to dig through tons of financial recycling paperwork and recently located statements that did not ever show a $300 deposit in the last three years. My aunts and I spoke and it was said that management told her the apartment did not need to be immediately inspected and that the deposits could be transferred to her heir, me when she died.
If I had known this, I would have personally gone up to the building and made them inspect and made them refund the deposit then and there. She needed the $300 far more than us. On top of that, the manager never got back with me about the pet deposit following the conversation. I eventually contacted her again two weeks later to find out what was up with the refund, and only then did I find out the amount it was written for, that it was just mailed, and also that it was made out in my mother’s name. The manager gave me the runaround and told me my bank should cash it if I provided them with the will or their bank should. Absolutely not. She knows better. People die in this building constantly and refunds have to be issued. You can’t tell me this is the first time they have experienced this type of problem. She isn’t that naïve.
On top of all of this, there are other residents in this building that have no business living by themselves. Management knows it does not intervene. Residents on my mother’s floor complained several years back about one male resident on their floor wandering around without his clothes on in the hallway and trying to get into other people’s apartments. People in this building are terrible about leaving their doors unlocked. The conjecture was that he had dementia. I personally witnessed similar resident behavior during the two weeks I spent vacating her apartment. This is pure neglect on their part plain and simple. They have an ethical duty to provide a safe living environment for tenants. This includes safety from other residents and the resident's safety from themselves, not just the health safety concerns listed in the complaint that violate HUD standards. If there are problems like these, Adult Protective Services should be involved in order to get the families of the resident(s) involved. So should HUD.
The facility also is chronically infested with bed bugs. One of the hallways on my mother’s floor has been infested at least three times in the last 18 months. This is not counting other floors.
My mother deserved better living standards than this. I deserved peace-of-mind knowing my mother was adequately cared for. Because of all the stress I have had to deal with since September, I had been diagnosed with PTSD and now am on amyplodine and bisoprolol (blocks norepinephrine). I was hospitalized twice in the ER from 2-Jan-2019 until the end of January because of the issues, and it is directly because I could not get the problems adequately solved.
On top of everything else, the district manager refuses to reissue a check unless we physically bring them the check back to the facility. Or, we could mail it, but I am certainly not going to send it out by snail mail and then have them give the excuse that it was never received. So, we will do a trade-off, because I have refused to give them the check unless we have the other one to immediately replace it. Plus, the name on the check will need to be verified to make sure they have not screwed up again. My husband has agreed to do it for me, because I obviously don't need the stress. It is unbelievable that they won't just issue a stop payment on the check they issued. It was their fault.
The Good Samaritan Society Reviews
Back in September, my mother’s living condition at Olathe Towers, operated by the Good Samaritan Society, a HUD facility, rapidly deteriorated due to her health. She had not done dishes in weeks, possibly a month. There were dishes piled all over in the kitchen, rotten food was sitting out on the kitchen countertops, fruit punch had been spilled all over the countertops, the kitchen floor, and the carpeting. The floors had not been vacuumed in weeks. Crumbs were all over the carpeting going through the living room. Makeup power was spilled all over the floor in the living room and was stinking up the department. Trash had not been taken out in well over a month. Her bathroom had bag after bag of used Poise pads and unlaundered clothing which was gaggable. You have no idea how bad her apartment was. My only excuse for not finding it sooner is because I had not been over there in several weeks due to my husband’s niece staying with us for another family emergency. In the meantime, my aunt was driving from north of the river to check in on her. I was notified about the condition of my mother’s apartment around the 4th of September by my cousin.
When completing cleaning, I didn’t dig deeper in into the deep spaces, such as the refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, pantry, closets, etc, because she would fuss anytime I would try to get into these areas. I didn’t want to upset her further by causing more of a confrontation between us, so I decided to get apartment management involved. So, in order to get these areas addressed, I contacted their front office. I spoke to an employee who stated my mother was in violation of her lease and that management could get someone up there to inspect and could issue an eviction notice. This would have been needed to get her into skilled nursing, which is what she needed for adequate care. She also suggested that I contact Johnson County Department on Aging for an evaluation. This employee also stated other people in the building had noticed her rapid decline, and she said she didn’t want to upset me, but she thought my mother needed hospice care. I agreed and further explained the problem with getting in hospice care.
My mother was a Christian Scientist. Therefore, she did not have a primary care physician and did not seek medical treatment at all for any of her health conditions. She was so radical that would not have stuck a foot in cold water if she thought it would reduce swelling. I knew she had a large lump on her breast that was medically untreated. Whether it was malignant or benign is known, because we are still waiting on the autopsy results. She had this lump for about 10 years or more. In addition, she had what I believe to be some type of rheumatoid disease that affected her joints, which meant she had problems walking normally for nearly 20 years. In the last 12 months, we believe she suffered a mini-stroke.
For about 50 days, she lost muscle tone in half of her face, could not write normally, and her balance was majorly affected. She had the writing problems and the balance issues until the day she died. About a year ago, I believe what set it off was a large infected area on the side of her head that swelled and drained for nearly two weeks, possibly an MRSA infection, but I will never know, I forced her into letting me apply tea tree oil to it, because there were not any other options at hand, and it eventually cleared up, thank God.
The Good Samaritan Society has skilled nursing, I had looked into seeing what steps needed to be taken in order to get her transferred to the unit without her consent (she was refusing to leave her apartment), and admissions stated she would need a primary care physician to sign off on it, Because she did not have one, she stated she would need to legally investigate what steps would need to be taken to get her into the unit.
The woman even went as far to say my mother would not have to accept medical care if that was a problem. All the facility would need to do is provide hygiene and food for her if she had a room there. But this was still a problem for my mother and her relatives that are Christian Scientists, because they never believed the facility would not force medical care on her. So when I explained all of this to the employee, she stated management had a responsibility to inspect her apartment if there were violations, because it clearly states how the apartment should be maintained per HUD standards. She was not only putting herself at risk but also others in the facility (e.g. cockroach infestations, bed bugs, etc).
I contacted Johnson County Department on Aging for an evaluation. It took them a couple of weeks to get out there, so my spouse and I did a lot of the pre-cleaning because we didn’t want her living in the hot mess. We cleaned the bathroom, the exterior of the kitchen, cleaned dirty kitchenware, vacuumed, and deep cleaned the carpet with our Bissell machine. We left the deep areas for the apartment management and the JCDA to inspect. When the Department on Aging came, they did not inspect the deep areas. They stated they would get her approved for cleaning services and the charity would come in to complete a safety inspection. Catholic Charities came in a week later. They stated all they do is surface cleaning, could come in for two hours a week, but would not start until October. Not much of a safety inspection to say the least. So, we relied on apartment management to get into the other areas to inspect.
Although I reported the problem to the apartment manager, from September 6th 2018 to 2-Jan-2019 (the day she died), she did absolutely nothing to get any inspector into her apartment to go through these areas. I only know this because I began cleaning out her apartment and saw the level of filth that was in the apartment.
When I opened up cabinets, absolutely every single kitchenware item was dirty. Dirty items were being stored away. So were the cabinets, completely filthy on the inside. She had also taken dirty kitchenware items and bagged them in the bottom of the pantry and hidden them under recycling plastic bags. Dirty kitchenware was found in with clothes under the bed and also in her closet. About ¼ of the items had black mold on them from decaying food. We began to remove food from the refrigerator, and we found some food was expired by 3 months. She had left so much food in the refrigerator that a person could not have noticed the condition of it, because it was completely covered. After we removed everything did we notice how bad it was. Spilled food, spilled congealed fruit punch in the bottom drawer. Worst of all, there were dead worms in the back of the refrigerator. They only could have come from two sources: Meals on Wheels or Payless Grocery Store in Olathe. Although we brought her food on a regular basis, there is no way those things came from our refrigerator. My guess is they crawled out of an unsealed container, such as Meals on Wheels, and then they died.
Catholic Charities came the day she died because I made a call. They had not been there in a month because their housekeeper was not showing up and then she quit. Don’t even get me started on Catholic Charities; they never even tried to get a replacement to clean her apartment nor did they notify Johnson County Department on Aging that they could not do the job themselves. If they had, they would have referred us to another cleaning service. That is a whole other complaint in and of itself due to failure to stick to cleaning schedules, failure to show up, and misrepresenting hours worked. So, the level of filth found the day she died in the deep areas can be verified through Catholic Charities final housekeeper. Plus, I took pictures.
I brought the apartment manager up to look at the problems. She seemed a bit concerned, I told her we were throwing away most of the kitchenware because I didn’t need the stress of cleaning it, and I brought up that she had been alerted to the problem back in September. She then offered to let me use their commercial dishwasher for the kitchen items. I took two grocery carts full of items downstairs. Many of the items could not be adequately washed and had to be pre-scrubbed up to four times before dishwasher loading. Other items had to be thrown away, otherwise, there would have been three grocery carts full of items. I am assuming she let me use the dishwasher because she was so embarrassed by her inaction. I doubt it was just because she felt sorry for me. When I turned in the keys, I told her I had left the refrigerator for them to clean because I wanted it thoroughly documented. When I reviewed the walk-through paperwork, she didn’t even list the condition of the refrigerator on it, although they charged $25 for cleaning it. She just didn’t want a record of how bad the place was. It was the only thing I left for them to clean that I could not do myself.
She did list the spills on the carpet and listed out mold on the carpeting and walls, but they must have been able to get it all out because these items were not charged on the deposit and rent refund check.
Finally, despite providing them with a will and name change paperwork, they issued the rent and security deposit refunds in my mother’s name. Prior to vacating her apartment, when the manager initially came in at my request, I was told whatever was left of the security deposit and rent paid for the month would be given to me. Never was it said that my mother’s name would be written on the check. Plus, I personally had to sign my own name to verify the property’s condition as well as vacating paperwork. Legally, of course, I cannot sign my mother’s name to a check because I do not have power-of-attorney. So, to get the check cashed, a probate attorney would need to be hired. Because the check is for $644, probate didn’t even make financial sense.
This is all the money left other than the TOD on her checking account which was for about $1500. Despite continuing to complain about the check and offering documentation showing I was entitled to it legally (she left all of her property to me and the will should have been sufficient as well as their allowance to let me clean out her apartment and to sign vacating paperwork), management at this location continued to refuse to issue the check in my name and stated it would just go to unclaimed funds at the state level. I even offered to sign the check back over to Good Samaritan Society as a donation so the money would not go to waste and the manager refused.
I continued to complain right up to a written complaint to their corporate office. I spoke to a district manager. I told him everything included in this complaint. He apologized for the confusion and stated the check would be issued in my name. I have this in writing. He also used the excuse that they are not an assisted living facility which is why they didn’t get involved in the mess in her apartment. Seriously. The mess was a HUD violation. How they do not understand that is breathtaking.
My husband and I have agreed that it all gives the appearance that they just wanted to sit on the rent and desposit refunds in order to enrich their own bank account and that I'd just give up. In addition, $300 of the deposit should have been issued back to my mother 2 years ago; it was a pet deposit, and my mother’s dog died. Management was notified when the dog died, most of the other residents in the building knew, and no one came to her apartment to complete an inspection in order to issue a refund. I only personally found out about this when she died, because the manager stated she knew my mother’s dog had died but could not find paperwork in the file that she completed an inspection.
She said she would have to research if a check had ever been made out. In the meantime, I tried to get bank statements from Commerce, my mother’s bank but was largely unsuccessful because they stated I was only a TOD. Instead, I had to dig through tons of financial recycling paperwork and recently located statements that did not ever show a $300 deposit in the last three years. My aunts and I spoke and it was said that management told her the apartment did not need to be immediately inspected and that the deposits could be transferred to her heir, me when she died.
If I had known this, I would have personally gone up to the building and made them inspect and made them refund the deposit then and there. She needed the $300 far more than us. On top of that, the manager never got back with me about the pet deposit following the conversation. I eventually contacted her again two weeks later to find out what was up with the refund, and only then did I find out the amount it was written for, that it was just mailed, and also that it was made out in my mother’s name. The manager gave me the runaround and told me my bank should cash it if I provided them with the will or their bank should. Absolutely not. She knows better. People die in this building constantly and refunds have to be issued. You can’t tell me this is the first time they have experienced this type of problem. She isn’t that naïve.
On top of all of this, there are other residents in this building that have no business living by themselves. Management knows it does not intervene. Residents on my mother’s floor complained several years back about one male resident on their floor wandering around without his clothes on in the hallway and trying to get into other people’s apartments. People in this building are terrible about leaving their doors unlocked. The conjecture was that he had dementia. I personally witnessed similar resident behavior during the two weeks I spent vacating her apartment. This is pure neglect on their part plain and simple. They have an ethical duty to provide a safe living environment for tenants. This includes safety from other residents and the resident's safety from themselves, not just the health safety concerns listed in the complaint that violate HUD standards. If there are problems like these, Adult Protective Services should be involved in order to get the families of the resident(s) involved. So should HUD.
The facility also is chronically infested with bed bugs. One of the hallways on my mother’s floor has been infested at least three times in the last 18 months. This is not counting other floors.
My mother deserved better living standards than this. I deserved peace-of-mind knowing my mother was adequately cared for. Because of all the stress I have had to deal with since September, I had been diagnosed with PTSD and now am on amyplodine and bisoprolol (blocks norepinephrine). I was hospitalized twice in the ER from 2-Jan-2019 until the end of January because of the issues, and it is directly because I could not get the problems adequately solved.
On top of everything else, the district manager refuses to reissue a check unless we physically bring them the check back to the facility. Or, we could mail it, but I am certainly not going to send it out by snail mail and then have them give the excuse that it was never received. So, we will do a trade-off, because I have refused to give them the check unless we have the other one to immediately replace it. Plus, the name on the check will need to be verified to make sure they have not screwed up again. My husband has agreed to do it for me, because I obviously don't need the stress. It is unbelievable that they won't just issue a stop payment on the check they issued. It was their fault.