Sycamore Place

Beverly

I am staying at Sycamore Place. They just bought this place about eight or nine months ago. It originally consisted of independent, assisted, and skilled nursing. But now, because of some technicalities, they have lost their assisted living. The assisted living people had to leave. They gave them a 30-day notice, and that did not sit well with all of us. The main problem is that the people are not happy that they're trying to convert the facility into what they call a multigenerational facility. It means that anyone can move in here with us. There would be no age restriction. Right now, we're 55 plus, but they want to open it up so that families or singles could move in. It's not official yet because we have to go through some more zoning hearings, but that's what they're working on. They're doing renovations. The actual appearance of the building is not bad. We used to have a lot of amenities. Unfortunately, we've lost most of them. We used to have a little grocery store and a health center. It was becoming so dead and boring that many of us on the independent side took it upon ourselves to run bingo and things like that. We like to do things like have tailgate parties for sporting events and work on a Christmas party. We used to have Thanksgiving dinner. We would run fundraisers so that we could pay for it because the facility didn't support it at all. We had sewing activities and used to have transportation in the van to go shopping. We are supposed to get ten meals per month. We can pick on a menu ten different times, and that only includes either a lunch or a dinner. The food is horrible. Sometimes, some of the staff members are very rude to the residents. When we ask them different things, they ignore us. We don't get what we feel is valuable because they don't do anything. The maintenance is very poor. It's gone downhill. The security is very poor. They've got two people trying to cover three buildings, so they can't do it 24-7. They don't do it during the daytime. They do it in the evening, and it's almost impossible for them to fulfill.