Jill Porter: Channel your fury over Lavin case to change assisted-living regulations
By Jill Porter
Philadelphia Daily News

YOU'RE NOT alone if you're still haunted by the fact that Rosalind Lavin got off so easy.

You're not alone if you think she should have been criminally prosecuted for the horrific conditions endured by the residents of her personal-care homes.

I continue to be contacted by readers appalled that Lavin, who lives lavishly on the Main Line, was able to get away with paying $700,000 and avoid acknowledging wrongdoing to resolve a federal investigation.

Wow. Got a call from someone about this who asked me what I thought about someone named Rosalind Lavin.

"Who?" I said.

"Just Google" said the other person...."it's horrifying"

So I Googled...and am appalled. Appalled that this Villanova resident could do these things she is charged with, and somewhat appalled that her sentance in the end wasn't 100% a punishment to fit the crime, and was more like a pricey slap on the wrist?

As a matter of fact, can one disagree with what Jill Porter says on June 11th?

Jill Porter: Let the punishment fit the greedy crime: Make owner live in one of her squalid homes
By Jill Porter
Philadelphia Daily News

THERE ought to be a special place in hell for greedy malefactors who live lavishly on the backs of society's downtrodden souls.

Rosalind Lavin, of Villanova, for instance, ran four personal- care homes for the physically and mentally disabled, the elderly and sick.

She helped support a life of luxury on her Main Line estate by using some of the residents' government checks - including veterans and disability benefits - to help pay her salary and expenses, according to U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan.

That would be your tax dollars and mine.

Yesterday, Lavin settled a civil case brought by federal prosecutors by agreeing to pay $700,000 to the government.

She did not admit wrongdoing.

Under the settlement, she's banned from ever running another personal-care home....I'd like to see Lavin forced to live in one of her facilities for a while, as part of the settlement agreement.

The facilities provided "grossly inadequate, dangerous housing and care," according to U.S. Attorney Meehan.

Residents had insufficient food, lived in "unsanitary, substandard" conditions, weren't given appropriate medications and had "inadequate and unclean clothing, linens and bedding," a federal investigation revealed.

So these folks were dirty and hungry and unmedicated, their needs unattended, while the Lavins thrived in her gated Villanova estate.

If that doesn't make your blood boil, you should worry.

Ok ...WOW...then I read this:
Philadelphia Daily News:Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2008
Lavin's other home of horrors

Rosalind Lavin's four-acre Villanova estate was notorious on the Main Line even before Lavin lived there.
It was the site of a triple murder.

In July 1982, aviation pioneer Courtlandt Gross was shot to death during a robbery at the Arrowmink Road mansion, along with his wife, housekeeper and family dog....According to a longtime Lavin acquaintance - who spoke on condition of anonymity - the Lavins got a great deal on the house because it was cursed by the murders. Most potential buyers recoiled at the notion of living there....Rosalind and Robert, who has since died, bought it for $590,000 in 1984. There's a $2.1 million mortgage on the property and it's worth multiples of that. *

- Jill Porter

Arrowmink Road is in Lower Merion Township interestingly enough....a woman with a cursed business living in a cursed house? That's very made-for-TV-Lifetime Movie.

But seriously, read these other articles. We need to be better stewards of the disabled and disadvantaged in our communities. The fact that this Lavin lived high on the hog at a cushy Villanova address at the expense of those so vulnurable completely leaves me speechless. Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised, but this is quite horrible, and it makes you wonder about living conditions in assisted living houses and halfway houses everywhere, doesn't it? We should really know more about what our tax dollars subsidize, shouldn't we?

'A crime, crime, crime, crime'
Squalid care homes owner fined 700G
By KITTY CAPARELLA, MICHAEL HINKELMAN & GLORIA CAMPISI
Philadelphia Daily News
215-854-5880

NEVER AGAIN, said the feds, and they meant it.
Never again will owner Rosalind Lavin nor the managers of her four personal-care centers in Philadelphia and Media allow more than 210 residents to live in what U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan called "appalling" conditions.

Never again will Lavin or her managers allow residents to lie in vomit or feces for days, unattended.

Never again will Lavin or her managers serve insufficient food to residents, like a slice of bologna and a piece of cheese between bread, and call it nutritious.

Never again will Lavin or her managers be allowed to ignore the handing out of medications, or fail to seek medical care when it's needed for the disabled, mentally handicapped and elderly.

Never again will she or her managers allow residents to wear inadequate or soiled clothing, or lie on filthy bed linens.

Never again will she or her managers allow the physically disabled, the mentally handicapped or the elderly to live in grossly inadequate, structurally unsafe and dangerous firetraps that she called housing.

And never again will Lavin be able to stuff her pockets and bank accounts with residents' Social Security and disability payments to fund her luxurious lifestyle - with a multimillion-dollar portfolio of fabulous homes in Villanova, Florida and New Jersey, and an aircraft - as alleged in her settlement agreement with the feds.

Even as Lavin - a licensed pilot - denied wrongdoing of the above listed infractions in her civil settlement yesterday, workers were painting the exterior of her posh 14-room mansion beige and pinkish- tan, near the swimming pool and tennis court in her gated Villanova estate, called "Lionsgate," adorned with benches, sculptures and a babbling brook...the long-blond-haired Lavin must pay the feds $700,000 - a drop in the bucket to this multimillionaire - as part of the settlement.

Yesterday, she signed the settlement agreement to never again own or operate a patient-, personal- or residential-care facility, or run a program or facility that receives federal health-care funds.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Issue date: 11/13/02 Section: News
A broken home?
The state closed a personal care facility near campus, citing numerous violations.
Drew Armstrong

Everyday, students pass by the barbed wire and white cinder block of the Thoroughgood Home at 40th and Pine streets. But they likely have little knowledge of what went on inside its crumbling walls.
For the residents, filthy and inhumane conditions were a part of everyday life, according to state inspection reports and an advocacy group for the elderly and mentally ill.

On Aug. 26, the state's Department of Public Welfare finally closed the home after finding what the city Department of Licenses and Inspections called "conditions dangerous to human life."

Thoroughgood, a personal care boarding home licensed by the state, was better known to neighborhood residents by its unofficial name, Azalea Court....Over the past five years, the DPW cited Thoroughgood for more than 40 different violations and fined the home more than any other in the region, according to Kathy Gerrity, a DPW official who worked to close the home....Thoroughgood's owner, Rosalind Lavin, did not return repeated phone calls to comment on the death or Thoroughgood's other alleged violations, and the female resident could not be reached for comment...While Lavin has lost her license from the state to operate a personal care home, Thoroughgood remains in operation as an apartment complex, according to the state and the advocacy coalition. State law prevents Lavin from getting another personal care home license for five years.

To date, poor conditions have led to the closure of three of the Lavin family's four personal care homes and the relocation of the residents.

But in the case of Thoroughgood, many of the residents will be moving to the Lavins' only remaining home -- Ivy Ridge.

Posted on Sat, Jun. 14, 2008
'A nice place,' despite sqaulor
Lavin: I can't afford fixes at Ivy Ridge
By DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News
215-854-5934

ROSALIND LAVIN has a personal aircraft, a gated Villanova mansion with a swimming pool and tennis court and mansions in Florida and New Jersey.

But the Main Line multimillionaire says she doesn't have enough money to fix bent sprinkler heads and other "life-threatening" code violations city inspectors found at Ivy Ridge, the Roxborough assisted-living home she owns and was forced to close this week after federal authorities pegged her as a slumlord....As five Ivy Ridge residents scrambled to find a new place to live yesterday, Lavin squabbled with them about money, eager to make sure she got whatever rent money was due her....Yesterday, L&I Deputy Commissioner Dominic Verdi reversed the 24-hour eviction order and said his agency would honor the federally set Aug. 10 deadline.

That news apparently sounded like ka-ching! to Lavin.

"So you mean I can take [more] boarders in?" Lavin asked yesterday after hearing of the reprieve.

The federal settlement specifies that Lavin is no longer permitted to own or operate a patient-, personal- or residential-care facility, or program or center that receives federal health-care money. It's unclear whether a boardinghouse falls under that description.

Verdi said that Lavin is not permitted to have boarders at Ivy Ridge - at least until the code violations are fixed and she secures the proper licenses.

Lavin, 65, could not be reached for comment late yesterday. Her attorneys Larry Besnoff and Lawrence J. Tabas didn't return telephone calls. She denied wrongdoing in the settlement.

Several of Lavin's boarders described Lavin as a money-grubbing slumlord. Yesterday, she refused to return their security deposits...."She's so rotten that even God don't want her," said Jane Urban, 62, a boarder since February.

Lavin recruited at least three of her boarders in the past six months from a North Philadelphia homeless shelter.

There should be a special place in hell for people like this....also read a related column in Philadelphia Weekly about this.

Any thoughts? Wonder why people often have so few nice things to say about the Main Line? Does it make you wonder at the expense of who and what some make their money? Is she also associated with two groups where her name shows up here, here, and here?