New Jersey’s ORANJ – 2018 Annual Meeting HIghlights

On April 24, 2018,  members of the Organization of Residents Association of New Jersey, or  ORANJ, held a plenary meeting at Cedar Crest Retirement Community in Pompton Plains, New Jersey.  ORANJ President Ron Whalen began the meeting with an update on pending legislation attempting to resolve residents’ concerns about timeliness of payments on “refundable fee agreements.”  Part of the message is reflected in the history of Pat Lund, a resident of a CCRC in Waterford Township, New Jersey, who waited eight years for her “refundable fee” to be paid after moving out of her apartment.  Under the terms of her contract, the refund was not “payable” until someone else occupied her specific unit but the facility seemed to have little interest or incentive to market her particular unit.  For more on this topic, see my update post from last week.  As summarized by Ron Whalen, “many of the 10,000 New Jersey residents in CCRCs (also known as Life Plan Communities or LPCs) have this type of contract.”  

James McCracken, the new president and CEO of LeadingAge New Jersey was the afternoon speaker and he provided a roundup of topics affecting older adults in New Jersey as the legislative season draws to a close, including concerns about “earned sick leave,” delayed Medicaid payments by the state to care facilities, proposed minimums on CNA staffing at care facilities, and changes to minimum wage.  

I spoke in the morning about issues I see affecting CCRCs and LPCs nationally and in New Jersey, including topics that challenge tax-exempt CCRCs, such as pressure to make payments in lieu of taxes to state and local authorities.  On the topic of resident concerns, I addressed what I call the “big three”:  lack of transparency on cost and funding issues,  the need for effective resident voices in governance, and excessively paternalistic attitudes of some management. 

 This is at least my third time speaking with ORANJ members over a period of several years, and each time I visit I’m impressed with the strength of their resident organization and their ability to get the state legislature to listen.  ORANJ helped their state to be one of the first to get legislative support for CCRC residents gaining the statutory right to serve as voting members on boards of governance, and ORANJ advocacy was also  instrumental in passage of an enhanced “bill of resident rights” for CCRC operations. 

New Jersey has approximately 40 CCRC/LPC communities within the state.  Some 87 percent operate as not-for-profit, while another 13 percent are for profit.  The majority of the communities are now part of “multi-site” organizations, and I spoke with several residents who reported on pending conversions of not-for-profit to for-profit.