Workforce Housing: Solution to Senior Living Labor Shortage?

Senior living operators that are having trouble recruiting staff due to the lack of affordable housing for middle-income workers near their facilities are turning to on-site workforce housing, hotel-to-residential conversions and rent subsidies as solutions.

Montana-based The Springs Living is factoring workforce housing into an upcoming expansion of memory care and assisted living facilities it operates in Whitefish, according to a report in Senior Housing News.

“Now we’re going to add independent living and workforce housing. As part of that design process, we’re looking at operations for including a tranche of workforce housing as part of that campus,” CEO Fee Stubblefield told SHN.

In urban areas with a high cost of living, senior living operators are struggling to recruit workers who need to commute more than an hour from where they live.

For one operator in Naples, FL, the solution was to form a partnership with a developer and convert a nearby hotel into a workforce residence that is being shared with several other companies.

In September, Naples-based senior living operator Moorings Park Communities partnered with Colorado-based K2 Developers to buy a Super 8 Hotel for $9.6M in Naples for conversion into residential housing.

The hotel, in proximity to three life plan communities operated by Moorings Park, will be the company’s first fully dedicated housing project for its workers.

Hotel rooms will be converted into studio apartments. Moorings Park plans to lease out a block of 16 units in the hotel and rent them to single workers for $1,200 per month, and $1,400 to renters with a roommate.

NHC Healthcare System, a local hospital network in Naples, is leasing 20 of the hotel units for its workers. Average one-bedroom rates in the Naples area start at more than $2,000 per month.

New York-based Panda ECS, a Q4 2021 startup, acts as an intermediary between skilled nursing facility operators, apartment landlords and nursing home employees to set up discount apartment rentals.

Panda, which provides the discounts when an employee signs a 12-month lease in a designated apartment, expanded in 2022 with 6,000 discount rental units reserved for nursing home employees in Maryland and DC, according to a report in Skilled Nursing News.

Indiana-based Majestic Care, a Panda client, offers workers in several urban cluster markets a 20% housing discount at different apartment complexes in units arranged and administered by Panda.

According to SNN’s report, providing subsidized housing is proving to be a boon to recruiting efforts at skilled nursing facilities, and to retaining current staff.