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Wth!! Wow!! Arlene Kohen was 89 years old and recently widowed when she moved to the Harborside continuing-care retirement community in Port Washington, N.Y., in January 2020. Getting in wasn’t cheap. Harborside required a $945,000 entrance fee, a standard in the industry. On top of that, Kohen was paying $5,700 in monthly fees by the end of her stay. Kohen sold the family house in Great Neck, N.Y., for $838,000 to help cover entry. Harborside told her that 75% of that upfront fee would be refundable to her family upon her death, or returned to her if she chose to leave. Harborside struggled to recruit residents and went bankrupt three times. Finally, the owner sold the business to an investor who is scaling back on the level of care offered. Kohen needed more care, so she had to leave. But because of the way bankruptcy proceedings work, secured creditors get paid before residents. Kohen’s family expects to get back less than one-third of the $710,000 refund the facility promised her. “That’s money that I’ll never see,” said Beverly Kohen Fried, Kohen’s daughter. Among nearly 2,000 of these types of facilities nationwide, at least 16 of them have filed for chapter 11 since the outbreak of Covid-19 in March 2020. Those 16 bankruptcies wiped out more than 1,000 families’ savings totaling at least about $190 million accumulated over decades.Read more: https://on.wsj.com/3GAUX7u