Ruggles

Affordable

Assisted

Living

Boston,       Massachusetts

Introduction

The Developers New Communities Services New Atlantic Development Committee to End Elder Homelessness

The Residents

The Member

Audio Tour

The Numbers

Introduction

When Mary Robinson suffered several serious health problems a number of years ago, she moved from Atlanta to her native Boston to be close to her son and sister.

Panoramic View of Ruggles Affordable Assisted Living

"I had two strokes and a heart attack," says Ms. Robinson, who had been living in Atlanta for the last 20 years. "So I needed some assistance in living."

Enclosed garden at Ruggles Assisted Living.

Not long after returning to Boston, she learned about the planned opening of the Ruggles Affordable Assisted Living Community, a 43-unit home for frail elders located just outside of Dudley Square in the Roxbury section of Boston.

"One of my friends was telling me they had assisted living here at the old Lafayette School," says Ms. Robinson. "It seemed interesting and sentimental, so I decided I'd take a look at it."

Sentimental, she notes, because she had attended the Lafayette School for several years in the early 1940s and had lived just a few blocks away from it.

Opened in the fall of 2001, Ruggles Assisted Living is home to Ms. Robinson and other elders who require daily assistance with their health but do not want to live in a nursing home.

The brainchild of Pamela Shea, president and founder of New Communities Services, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing and other programs for elders, and Peter Roth, president of New Atlantic Development Corporation, a for-profit developer of affordable housing, Ruggles Assisted Living was designed specifically for low-income residents.

Ms. Shea and Mr. Roth had earlier collaborated on several projects and the idea of developing an affordable assisted-living development in Boston appealed to both of them, especially since almost all assisted-living facilities in the state were designed for market-rate residents.

Ms. Shea says she realized there was a gap in services for low-income elders through her work with the elderly. "People ended up in nursing homes when they needed a little more care because there was no assisted housing for low-income people," she says. "The primary purpose of Ruggles was to try and provide that continuum of care."

To get the initiative up and running, the developers pieced together some creative financing from a patchwork of affordable-housing programs, including Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Boston Community Development Block Grant funds, HOME funds, and HIF funds.

Another key ingredient was a $250,000 Affordable Housing Program (AHP) grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston.

"It takes a tremendous amount of resources to do these projects the right way, and that AHP program oftentimes is the last piece that fills the gap to make a project work," says Mr. Roth.

"The Federal Home Loan Bank was perfect," adds Pamela Feingold, senior vice president / community development lending, for member Wainwright Bank & Trust Company, which applied for the AHP grant on behalf of the initiative and also purchased the Low Income Housing Tax Credits. "It allowed us to close the deal and get all the financing sources."

Because Low Income Housing Tax Credits were involved, the developers were under pressure to have the financing in place by a specified date. "We were under the gun to find the money, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston allowed us to do that," says Ms. Feingold. "We've really relied very heavily on it. It's been a great partnership."

Elisabeth Babcock, president and CEO of the Committee to End Elder Homelessness, a Ruggles partner and the manager of the facility, points out that 48 percent of Ruggles' residents were living in more costly nursing homes before their arrival at the Roxbury facility. Those residents neither wanted nor needed to be in a nursing home but were living there because there wasn't an alternative. Ruggles, she adds, provides a more desirable and cost-effective alternative.

"We're doing this very much as a pilot," she says. "We're really starting to talk with legislators and administrators about the possibility of replicating this again, because it represents such a significant win in Medicaid savings to the state."