SHUT HOME OFFERED GRIM LIFE FOR ELDERLY

The Record (New Jersey)

Author: BRIAN KLADKO, Staff Writer; The Record

Dateline: MONTVALE

From the outside, the Hillas Vale Guest Lodge looks to be a dreary place to spend one's twilight years.

The wrap-around porch is crowded with worn easy chairs, their upholstery faded and torn. The windows are clouded with grime. Coffee cans serve as receptacles for cigarette butts. Paint is peeling from the front door.

Life inside Hillas Vale was just as dreary, say residents of the West Grand Avenue boarding home.

"The house was always cold in the wintertime," said Matthew O'Brien, 93. "You'd freeze to death at night. . . . Another year, I thought I'd die."

State officials closed the home Thursday, citing unsanitary and unsupervised conditions for the nine people, most of them elderly, who were living there. The residents were taken to nearby group homes, one in Park Ridge and the other in Woodcliff Lake.

Some of those residents say the conditions, while not unlivable, were far from comfortable. In the shower, hot water amounted to a trickle. Meals were basic - lunch, for example, usually consisted of baloney on white bread, and if the spaghetti dinner was accompanied by a meatball, it was considered a special treat.

Housekeeping was hardly a priority. The bathrooms, said Bob Halsted, were cleaned once every two months; sometimes, feces would remain on the floor for weeks at a time.

But Halsted, a 55-year-old who was one of the house's younger residents, stayed there for nearly two years while recuperating from an ulcer. Like other residents who were removed from the house Thursday, he wanted to leave, and was planning to leave. He just had not gotten around to it.

Hillas Vale made no pretensions to be a nursing home or assisted living facility; there were no nurses, therapists, or activity directors on hand. It was simply a once-stately house where residents paid $650 to $1,000 a month for room and board.

Residents blame Maureen Culhane, the home's owner, for the conditions they endured. They said she skimped on everything, letting things deteriorate so much that residents felt compelled to do some cooking and housekeeping themselves.

Culhane would not discuss the allegations against her Saturday. Any comment, she said, will have to wait until her lawyer returns from vacation.

But Culhane did say that some of the residents were relocated against their will. One woman, she said, "had to be torn away from me." State officials, she added, "were in like wild animals, packing the residents out whether they wanted to go or not. They didn't explain anything to the residents."

Culhane also owns the 18-bed Shannon Rest Home in Waldwick. State officials, who discovered similar conditions there, have not closed that facility but have forbidden any new admissions.

Sometimes, residents said, Culhane would not show up to prepare lunch or dinner, letting them fend for themselves. A 73-year-old tenant said he had performed manual labor around the house - moving furniture, raking up grass clippings - to lower his rent to $650 a month.

"She screamed at me once, because she said I wasn't moving fast enough when I was working," said the man, who did not want his name to be used.

Not all residents resented Culhane. An 88-year-old woman, despite her dissatisfaction with Culhane's cooking and housekeeping, said she stayed at Hillas Vale for five years "because I loved her. She was my friend."

The house was almost closed two previous times, but the state backed off after finding that conditions had improved. Last month, an administrative law judge decided those improvements were just temporary, and ordered the residence closed.

Culhane faces a $10,000 fine for not allowing state inspectors into the house. Bergen County Prosecutor William H. Schmidt said his staff will investigate whether criminal charges should be filed against her.

The residents will be staying at the two other facilities indefinitely, at state expense, until permanent accommodations can be found for them.

Staff Writer Brian Kladko's e-mail address is kladko(at)bergen.com