Trends in Assisted Living Center Industry- Wert-Berater, Inc.

Feb. 8, 2011 - PRLog -- Area homes becoming assisted-living centers

By Merritt Melancon - merritt.melancon@onlineathens.com

Published Sunday, February 06, 2011

As new and foreclosed homes sit vacant, and families struggle to pay their mortgages, more homeowners are turning their residences into assisted-living centers to bring in extra income.

The homes provide seniors with full-time care and a family-like environment, but some neighbors worry that the caretaker businesses will sink their already suffering property values.

"There is no place in this type of a subdivision for a 24-hour nursing home, and that's basically what this amounts to, a small nursing home," said Peter Schwan, whose neighbors in The Springs subdivision south of Braselton are hoping to turn their house into an assisted-living home.

The practice of using residential homes as assisted-living centers to house two to six elderly people is not new in Georgia, said Dan Day, legislative chairman for the Assisted Living Association of Georgia.

It's fairly common in Gwinnett County, where more than 200 small assisted-living centers are licensed. Only a handful of single-family homes in Barrow County are registered with the state as assisted-living centers, but more people are seeking permission to open residential care centers there.

Planners have seen half a dozen applications for residential assisted-living centers in the past year, said Bob Lanham, chairman of the Barrow County Planning Commission. All of them have drawn some opposition from their neighbors, Lanham said.

"We've seen several in the last 12 months; we've probably had four or five come through," Lanham said. "I think we've only seen one or two where people have had some experience with personal-care homes, but in a lot of instances it's a situation where they have a fairly large house and are looking to earn a little extra money taking care of people who need a little extra help."

Personal-care homes or assisted-living facilities aren't banned from residentially zoned areas of Barrow County, but homeowners have to apply for a special-use permit to operate the business out of their home. They also have to live in the house full-time.

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