Dutchess County’s sole nonprofit senior living facility battles for survival

Ruth Borkoski is one of two remaining residents at Dutchess County’s only nonprofit senior living facility, the 150-year-old Vassar-Warner Home, which is slated for closure unless it can prove it has the funding and capacity to stay open. 

“I intend to stay here, I’m not going to leave and I tell them I’m not leaving, I’ll be the last one out and if they have to drag me out, they’ll drag me out,” the 97-year-old insisted to New York Nonprofit Media. 

The Poughkeepsie-based Vassar-Warner is in a fight for survival, raising money on GoFundMe to be able to remain open with more than $13,000 raised so far. 

“We really need the donations to get us through the end of the year, and then we can have new residents come in,” Borkoski said. 

She and 86-year-old Dorothy Schuster, the mother of Vassar-Warner’s new president, Rich Schuster, are cared for by 18 people who remain employed at the home, covering all 24 hours, seven days a week, doing everything from personal care, to laundry and working the kitchen. However, at its peak the home employed around 35 people. 

In late July, Vassar-Warner Home was notified that it had until the end of October to prove to the Department of Health that it has the funding and capacity to remain open. Rich Schuster is confident that he can do that. 

“My mother has been here for almost 19 years, so I’ve been involved with the home for a long time,” Schuster said. He was shocked by the news of the closure and started the Save Vassar-Warner Home Committee, which created the GoFundMe page. 

Schuster was confused about the closure and began looking into past decisions made by the previous board that was slowly pushed out via pressure from Schuster and his committee. 

“The board seemed to make a lot of bad business decisions along the way,” Schuster said. “One of the big problems was that unlike most boards of nonprofit organizations, these people had no supervision at all,” he told New York Nonprofit Media. “Most nonprofit boards are beholden to their members and their members can get rid of the board if they don’t like what they’re doing. In this case, they had zero supervision, there were no members, they had complete autonomy.”

The previous board failed to work with local politicians, wouldn’t take advice from any consultants and decided the only option was to sell the building, according to Schuster. He added that the previous board even took a separate endowment set up to help lower-income residents pay for their stay, and used it to pay for general expenses of the home.

Ellen Smyth, who previously was in charge of the board, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Smyth and another board member, Laurie Cohn, resigned earlier this month. Schuster has since been installed as the new president, with two other remaining board members. 

Schuster expressed a deeply passionate mission to fix all of the mistakes made by the previous board and bring the home back to its peak. He said he has already written a detailed business recovery plan and reached out to philanthropic foundations and local politicians who have expressed interest in helping in the future now that the old board is out of the picture. 

Currently, Vassar-Warner just needs enough funding to get through the year and fill up all of the rooms, which Schuster says would be quite easy to do in a couple of months because many previous residents have expressed interest in returning. The last resident besides the remaining two left about a week ago.

“Upon their departure, the majority want to come back if we can manage to keep the place open,” Schuster said. “We just need to cover regular expenses until the place is full by the end of the year and then I feel confident that we’re going to be fully able to move forward without any outside help.”

Borkoski joked that now when residents play Bingo, there are only two that can play. “One of us is gonna get Bingo!” she said. Both she and Dorothy Shuster praised the home’s food that comes from a kitchen run by two employees. Schuster also said she was proud of her son Rich for the work he’s doing to keep the home open. 

“This is my second home,” said Ericka Von Salews, executive director of Vassar-Warner. “I’ve been here for almost nine years … This is where I want to be, it’s like no other place and I’ve worked in other nursing homes. It gets lonely but we are all very busy, desperately trying to save Vassar-Warner.” 

Vassar-Warner has until October 31, to prove that it has a plan to stay open. If not, the home will be forced to sell the property. 

“I appreciate any donation, big or small, Borkoski said. “We would be very happy.”