COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. — Florida has the third largest veteran population in the nation, only behind California and Texas. The majority of those veterans are over the age of 65. As they begin to enter long-term care, finding caregivers is proving to be a challenge.
Army veteran Ron Fournier says his time in the military took him from coast to coast.
“I was drafted when I was 22 years old, and I had a green card because I came from Canada,” Fournier said.
It would be decades before he ended up in Collier County. Instead, he was greeted with sunshine, beaches, and a recession that financially brought him back to square one.
“I tried to survive on social security and a small retirement,” Fournier said. “Very difficult, but it’s like anything else in life. You have to be able to adapt to what you have.”
He eventually found help and a place to live through friends who connected him with the Wounded Warriors of Collier County. More than a dozen veterans live in the organization’s Warrior Homes. Veterans like Fournier, who can be a bit more independent, live in furnished apartments. However, only some veterans qualify for this kind of housing due to medical needs.
“Let’s face it, I would imagine the average age in Naples, and Collier County is very close to 60,” Fournier said. “And so as they get older, they’re gonna need places to go. And a lot of those are veterans.”
There are more than a million veterans in Florida and more than 20,000 just in Collier County. However, according to the VA Predictive Analytics and Actuary Service, the population numbers have decreased slightly over the years.
Dale Mullins with Collier County Wounded Warriors said that’s because World War II veterans have started to pass away.
“The demand is still there. There will always be senior veterans,” Mullins said. “There will always be veterans in need.”
Navy veteran Alex Kane is a long way from becoming a “senior” veteran. However, he is another Warrior Homes resident and recognizes the need for housing that can accommodate older veterans who aren’t as independent.
“Some of them outlive the people in their lives that are important to them,” Kane says. “They live alone, or they don’t have basic services.”
Currently, there are nine state-run nursing homes in Florida for veterans to provide those services. Unfortunately, the only one in southwest Florida is more than an hour away in Port Charlotte.
“Charlotte County’s quite a ways away,” Fournier said. “Does everybody move to Charlotte County?”
Collier County Commissioner Rick LoCastro wants a similar home to be placed off Golden Gate Parkway. He says part of the funding, almost $30 million, would come from the county.
“Well, first off, the taxpayers had done their job in 2018 when they voted for the one-cent tax,” LoCastro says. “When that was approved by an overwhelming majority, a piece of that one-cent tax was immediately chopped off for the state-funded veterans nursing home.”
If the home is built, LoCastro wants to provide mental health care along with assisted living care for veterans who qualify. Many existing homes can house more than 100 veterans each but need more staff to care for them.
That lack of help means a lack of space for veterans in need. The Florida Department of Veterans Affairs reports show that no existing state-funded nursing homes are at total capacity. For example, the Douglas T. Jacobson home in Port Charlotte is just over half full, according to the latest annual report.
“It’s gotta be that there’s just not enough staff to run those nursing homes,” Mullins said.
LoCastro agrees and says part of the problem is money. He told NBC2 it could be hard to bring in workers for the homes while competing with groups willing to pay more.
Currently, the Port Charlotte state-funded veterans nursing home has job listings for licensed nurses offering a $42,000 salary and roughly $35,000 salaries for certified nursing assistants.
“Although I feel Collier County and even the state pays a fair wage,” LoCastro said, “we don’t have the flexibility that maybe a private hospital does or a private nursing home to say “We’re short five nurses, whatever we have to do in the way of bonuses or profit sharing or 401k, do it. We need to bring them in. We need to keep our company fully stocked.” Sometimes you don’t have that when working at the government levels.”
LoCastro says he wants the state to consider the high cost of living when they try to hire staff for the nursing home.
“It has to happen,” Fournier said. “It’s just a case of when or how it’s gonna happen.” As for when it’ll happen, it’s still years away. County officials say it could be three to five years before the home is done.
“The need exists now. The need for housing for these senior veterans has been going on for years,” Mullins said. “And even three to five years… the need is now.”
In the meantime, veterans will continue to rely on support from community agencies and nonprofits.
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