A routine Friday morning medical call turned into a raid on what authorities suspect was a sham senior care facility in Cole Valley. The Examiner reports that seven senior citizens have been removed from an unlicensed senior care facility at 1208 Stanyan Street, and the SFPD is questioning the owner and manager of the unauthorized operation. The fire department responded to a Friday 9:30 a.m. medical call from the senior care facility. They found a few seniors, but no actual care being given in a filthy and ramshackle facility.
The Chronicle dug through some public records to find that a business called Moana’s Independent Living was doing business at that particular address. But neither that business nor that address has a license to operate an assisted-living facility or an adult care home. And according to residents, the only kind of “independent living” they foster is among those who are mobile enough to avoid the squalid conditions of their care home for as much of the day as possible.
KRON 4 got one of the elderly victims to speak on camera about the conditions inside. “Raw food dropped on the floor,” resident of three weeks Robert Brown told the station. “The same rag used to prepare food also being used to wipe off the floor. Then, back to food handling. Washing dishes and general bacterial contamination. Mattresses on the floor. There is no food available for them. No medication available. They all need assistance, diaper changing. There was feces all over the floor this morning. It’s been a rather nightmarish place.”
The menu for the seniors appears to have varied between poison and nothing whatsoever. “In the first two weeks I was here, six days out of those, I was sick with intestinal food poisoning,” Brown told KRON 4. “At the moment, there is no food in the refrigerator. There’s no milk. There’s a few stalks of celery. Ostensibly, food has been on-schedule for the delivery for the past four days but we’ve received nothing.”
The seven seniors have been removed and hospitalized. Police are questioning individuals suspected of operating the business, but no arrests have been made.
