bankruptcy papers

The global pandemic’s continued challenging operating environment is forcing several more senior living and care facilities to file for bankruptcy or announce plans for closure.

A New Hampshire senior living community is the latest in the news to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in order to execute its sale to Skokie, IL-based Covenant Living Communities & Services. Hillside Village Keene, a nonprofit organization that offers assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing services, cited financial troubles as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic when it filed its case Monday, according to a report in the Keene Sentinel.

Covenant Living plans to pay $33 million for Hillside Village, court filings show.

Last week, a nonprofit that owns municipal-bond financed senior living communities in Georgia and Alabama also filed for bankruptcy, threatening to impose losses on bondholders. Subsidiaries of the Regional Housing and Community Services Corp. issued approximately $50 million of municipal bonds issued through the Public Finance Authority in Wisconsin, according to a report by Bloomberg. The firm, which is affiliated with Hickory, NC-based for-profit operator ALG Senior, retained GGG Partners as restructuring adviser, according to its filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Lastly, a Maine nursing home announced plans Monday to close in October after almost 40 years of operation. Executives at Island Nursing Home & Care Center said in a press release that the challenge of finding qualified staff over the course of the past decade have become too difficult, mostly as a result of a lack of affordable housing near the facility.

“Now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the national healthcare staffing crisis has reached a critical point. Facilities like ours can no longer find qualified staff,” the board stated in the release. “For INH, it is no longer a matter of location or funding. …there are simply not enough qualified staff available in a rapidly declining healthcare workforce. We have spent months exhausting every staffing resource at our disposal and beginning this fall, we will no longer be able to meet our minimum staffing requirements.”