The Lemon Fool

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:

airbus330 wrote:Thanks for posting that piece on RGL. It's in my intensive care ward and I'd been looking for reasons why it hadn't really become less volatile apart from spill over from other parts of the sector. Keeping them for now.

Yes, I think it's sector contagion rather than a findamental issue at RGL. My discomfort at holding too much RGL is subsiding by the day. A nice divi soon. I think I am putting that into Impact REIT along with a few shillings from elsewhere.

RVF

While Care Homes are never going to go away, I know from a friends experience how hard it is to run one profitably. Personally, I wonder if they might be dragged back into public ownership, especially if Sir Kier comes to power. Best of luck with it though.

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:Old people are getting older and there's more of them every day.

not after the policy of freeing up hospital beds by sending all the ill ones to care homes that ended up killing many off with covid. I think this will have an impact on their reputation and may even affect future residency, with people trying anything but going into a care home after this. Labour will be shouting about it a lot, just in their usual way of criticising the tories, it may have a knock-on effect.

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:
Very recently, Mrs RVF had to ring around local care homes for her 90+ y.o. father as he took a turn for the worse unexpectedly.

Guess what?

They were mostly 100% full.

Hmm......I'm not sure '100% full' means quite what it used to mean for many 'people-related' businesses though...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

gbjbaanb wrote:
not after the policy of freeing up hospital beds by sending all the ill ones to care homes that ended up killing many off with covid. I think this will have an impact on their reputation and may even affect future residency, with people trying anything but going into a care home after this. Labour will be shouting about it a lot, just in their usual way of criticising the tories, it may have a knock-on effect.

For most people a care home is the last resort. To reverse the trend of ever increasing numbers requiring care when elderly and unable to look after themselves, would require major social change, such as reverting back to multi-generational living being the norm. That might happen, but it probably won't happen quickly. In the mean-time the proportion of elderly people will continue rising and a significant number of this group will require care. The business model behind care homes is likely to change post-covid, possibly with a lot more state supervision and possibly with a lot more central government finance (aimed at mitigating the political damage of criticism around high covid death rates, which is now firmly in Labour's [expletive deleted]). I guess we'll know in about 10 years whether care home REITs were a good investment in 2020.

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:

Itsallaguess wrote:
Hmm......I'm not sure '100% full' means quite what it used to mean for many 'people-related' businesses though...

I can only tell you that they had no spare rooms. The main precaution at the care homes we know about is a complete block on visitors to clients. If the homes were full before the virus panic they'll still be full after it. After all, the reason clients are in there in the first place is because they have pretty much run out of other viable options. They aren't moving out any time soon. That's our experience and that's all we can go on.

Thanks RVF - that's good to know.

It'll be interesting to see what sort of additional costs this pandemic has created in these types of 'people-centric' businesses, and how well they're able to pass those extra costs on to their customers.

Good to hear that capacity isn't a big issue though.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

IIRC a lot of people were moved to care homes from hospitals in order to free up beds for the expected avalanche of covid patients.

That tells me that hospitals are providing some form of care for the elderly ill, and that might start to be more common - though the cynic in me says its only because the local authority cannot afford to send them to a care home, so leave them "bed blocking" where its someone else's problem.

Interesting that the ones you contacted were 100% full, I was told tens of thousands of the elderly in care homes had succumbed to the virus.