Rachel is a senior who suffers from Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a disease in which a person experiences hallucinations that are brought on by vision loss. The hallucinations are not dangerous and are purely visual, rather than psychiatric in nature, but they can be distressing. Rachel lives in an assisted living facility, where staff help reorient her to time and place when she is having hallucinations and assure her that she is safe.
Despite the manageable nature of Rachel’s condition, the assisted living facility gave her a 30-day eviction notice, claiming that her medical condition exceeded the level of care that the facility could provide and that her behavior posed a danger to herself or others. With the help of legal aid, Rachel successfully challenged the facility’s eviction notice at a hearing. Legal aid argued that the facility had an ongoing obligation to meet Rachel’s care needs, that it had not identified why it was unable to do so, and that it had failed to prove that Rachel was in any way dangerous. The administrative law judge ruled in Rachel’s favor and held that the facility could not force her to move out. Rachel is now content and safe in her home.