Hurricane Beryl’s impact on Texas, including extended power outages during a summer heatwave, has unleashed a flurry of proposed legislation targeting senior living communities.
Texas lawmakers have filed several bills requiring generators in assisted living communities and nursing homes:
- SB 481 would require emergency plans at assisted living communities and nursing homes to include generators.
- HB 1199 calls for emergency generators to have the capacity to run for a minimum of 72 hours.
- HB 1467 would require assisted living communities to have generators and to file health and safety plans with the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
- HB 2224 would require backup power for 48 hours after a power outage for assisted living communities, independent living communities and nursing facilities that have elevators.
- HB 863 would create a shared database for independent living communities that includes each community’s emergency plan. This bill also includes generator requirements.
Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall in July, exposed “critical gaps in Texas’s disaster preparedness” and left “our most vulnerable residents in dire straits,” according to Texas Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston), who filed SB 481. The hurricane caused 28 deaths among older adults in Texas, half of them from overheating, according to the AARP. Winter Storm Uri in 2021 led to the deaths of 107 older adults in Texas from hypothermia.
Unfortunately, Texas Assisted Living Association President and CEO Diana Martinez said, the bills stem from people conflating apartments, affordable housing and senior living, as well as statements misrepresenting the number of people injured by past weather events.
She said that TALA takes the legislation seriously and has been actively engaged with legislators in Harris County, which took the brunt of the power outage problems in the wake of last summer’s hurricane.
“We anticipate the filing of additional legislation that has a more measured and realistic approach to back-up power supply and addresses other concerns raised by the extended power outage,” Martinez told McKnight’s Senior Living.
Legislative push for generators goes on
In the wake of Uri in 2021, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission surveyed 2,025 assisted living communities and 1,217 nursing facilities, finding that their ability to provide cooling and heating during a power outage varied widely. Among assisted living communities, 47% reported having generators, but of those, only 56% said they could provide cooling, and 59% said they could provide heating.
In 2023, the US Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Special Committee on Aging recommended that states consider emergency power requirements for assisted living and other residential care settings, as well as better emergency communications between assisted living communities and nursing homes and state and local authorities. Those recommendations followed the release of an investigative report, “Left in the Dark,” that looked at how assisted living communities and nursing facilities weathered blackouts wrought by Winter Storm Uri.
Bills introduced in the Texas Legislature in 2021 and 2023 to require backup power in all assisted living communities did not move forward.
Independent living bill would create licensure issues
HB 863, which would establish a database of health and safety plans for independent living communities, presents another challenge, according to TALA: Independent living communities cannot provide healthcare services or activities of daily living to their residents. Providing such services, Martinez said, would make them unlicensed healthcare providers subject to investigations and civil penalties from the Texas attorney general’s office.
“Having a database of plans from independent living communities that cannot even ask about the health status of their residents is not going to help those residents that are vulnerable during a weather event,” Martinez said. “The Texas Department of Emergency Management already operates the State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry, which is used to coordinate and deploy emergency resources to the highest needs households first.”
She added that all Texas residents with medical needs or mobility limitations, regardless of where they live, should register their addresses and information with this program.
Source: McKnights Seniorliving