Arlington officials see the decision to phase out assisted living facilities at Culpepper Garden as part of a larger, nationwide problem with no easy fixes.
At a Saturday meeting, county leaders faced pressure to address the planned changes at the senior housing community, which are scheduled to go into effect next summer and impact more than 70 residents. However, they said that their ability to influence such issues is limited.
“It’s only going to get worse,” County Board member Maureen Coffey said.
Among Culpepper Gardens residents who may have to move is the 91-year-old mother of Adrienne Quinn. Quinn used the Board’s public-comment session to ask for help.
“Exert your moral authority,” Quinn urged Board members. “We have a year. We can have real solutions in a year’s time.”
In late June, the Arlington Retirement Housing Corporation announced it would be closing Culpepper Garden’s assisted living facilities by mid-2026 to concentrate on providing independent living facilities.
Culpepper Garden serves low-income seniors, and costs for providing assisted living services were unsustainable given limits on reimbursement rates from programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the organization said.
County Board Chair Takis Karantonis said the decision should serve as “a wake-up call for everybody” from the national to the local level.
“It’s an issue that has been silently emerging over the years,” he said. “‘Business as usual’ doesn’t work any more. We will have to lean into that and find new solutions.”
In the fiscal year 2026 budget, the county government provided about $1.2 million to support Culpepper Garden. But costs in the assisted living wing threaten to overwhelm the nonprofit housing organization’s entire operations, CEO Marta Hill Gray told ARLnow in early July.
Coffey said the fault was not with Culpepper Garden, but a lack of will to address the issue nationally.
“We do not have a system that pays for this care,” she said. “Culpepper Garden has an ongoing operating deficit, year over year, because of what it costs to provide care for our most vulnerable seniors. It costs a lot of money.”
County officials said they had reached out to elected officials at the state and federal levels. Any help they may be able to provide might not be the solution in this case, as Culpepper Garden officials have said their decision to eliminate assisted-living facilities is final.
Supporting residents who need to find new homes will be “high priority for us,” Karantonis said.
Culpepper Garden’s original facilities opened in 1975 on a parcel just west of Ballston. Assisted living options debuted in 2000.