CRESTVIEW — In two years, Alternative Living Inc., which operates Crestview Manor, may need to decide how best to serve its 60-some residents. That’s when the assisted living facility’s lease with Okaloosa County for their portion of the former Okaloosa Memorial Hospital runs out.
For now, the residents — mostly low-income Medicaid or Medicare recipients — will remain in the Pearl Street residence, and soon will be even more secure when a new roof is installed. Operating as Elder Services, the private company recently secured an approximately $300,000 Small Business Administration loan to replace the roof damaged in the April 2014 storm.
But that doesn’t stop Manor Director Becky Brice-Nash from worrying about her residents’ future. “If we go out of business, there are going to be all these people displaced,” she said. “It won’t just impact us, it’s going to impact the whole community. We are very much in need of low-income assisted living in our area.”
Alternative Living Director Ruth Lovejoy said the company sought a 10-year lease with a 10-year renewal option from the county to cover the loan’s 20-year life, making the 1955 building 81 years old when the loan is paid off.
County Facilities and Parks Maintenance Manager James Puckett said he will request funds in next year’s budget to reroof the part of the Manor not covered by Elder Services’ loan. “It’s a typical older county building,” Puckett said. “It’s one of those flat roofs that was typically built in that era. We’ve patched and fixed, but it’s getting harder to keep it patched. It’s better to tear it off and put a new one on.”
Brice-Nash said the county has approved building the new roof, but she still worries that, without an approved lease, North Okaloosa County’s most needy assisted living residents could become homeless. “We need to get someone on our side because these people will have no place to go,” Brice-Nash said. “In two years, this might be prime real estate for a parking area, I don’t know.”
However, County Commissioner Nathan Boyles said,“It is very premature for this to be an issue. The county is reviewing all the buildings in our inventory. We have many badly outdated buildings with maintenance issues largely as a result of poor decision-making in the past.”
But if Assisted Living Inc. had to start planning to move its Crestview services and residents to a new location in 2018, its resources would be limited, Lovejoy said. “There’s no way we could do it,” she said. “We’re on a bare-bones budget.”
She hopes Boyles and the Board of County Commissioners can help her find a solution.
“I have always liked Nathan Boyles because I think he’s a very honorable person,” Lovejoy said, adding she plans to meet with him Monday and hopes to discuss the building’s future.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview Manor seeks lease renewal; director fears resident displacement