Villa St. Francis

M. Elizabeth

I'm at the Villa St. Francis. It wasn't what I had hoped it would be. I had hoped to be part of a Christian community and a living community, and it hasn't worked out very well, just because I'm the only one that's really independent living. The meals aren't great either. Their price is good, but they don't provide much. They put out a calendar every month, but hardly any of them take place. The woman who is in charge is caring, but she has no leadership ability, and things don't get done. When you tell her about a problem, she just shrugs it off, and it doesn't get taken care of. I've done a lot of things myself, and then I was told that it wasn't my place. Almost everybody has aides that live in their room with them or stay during the day and go home at night, so that's the level of independent living that it is. The problem with the food is that they're getting it through something called Flik, and they get the lowest package available. We basically have chicken every day in different forms. I've made cookies every weekend, and I have shared them with everybody. There's a lounge and a kitchen on each floor, and I use the kitchen, and I make them. I pay for everything myself. People really look forward to that. I also show movies, and I do a craft class. I do these things because I'm able to do them. The rooms are nice, but they have ongoing problems with the pipes. We have leakage, and the toilets don't work a lot of times. A lot of times there are a lot of problems like that. They are going to go in and take care of those problems, and so they said that in the meantime we would have to move into The Convent. We can move over there while they're working on these things. It's very disruptive. Five or six years ago Villa St. Francis was very nice, and then it just went downhill from then. When I went there I had great hopes that it would be what I wanted because they have a chapel there, and I could go to the chapel every day and things like that. Even though I wasn't Catholic, I could enjoy it. They're very nice people, and a lot of the families that come in are very nice too. However, there are a lot of serious problems. They have 30 rooms, and they only have 18 to 20 filled. I even suggested that I wouldn't mind if they raised the rent $200 or $300 a month if they would provide better services. They also said that they would take residents to places, but they didn't. There's no way of getting to doctors' appointments and things like that. There's nothing available. The only activity that they have is they have one person that comes in and does exercises once a week. I've tried to tell them that that is not good enough and that they need to do it at least twice a week for it to really help people. The other activities that are going on are the ones that I provide, and that's pretty much it. They give you the very basics. You can survive because they usually have a salad bar, and so if you can't stand the foods that they're having you can at least have a salad or a soup. Somebody comes in your room and cleans the bathroom, but that's it as far as the cleaning goes. Everything is very, very basic.

Elly

I really liked Villa St. Francis. It was very clean and nice. Every floor had a living room and a kitchen. I liked the size of the bedrooms. It didn’t feel like you're in a nursing home. One thing I really liked about the place was the dining room. You didn’t have people waiting on you. You get your own lunch, and they have a great, big salad bar. I think it gave people a feeling of not being so dependent on other people. I would highly recommend this place to anybody. The place was absolutely gorgeous.