Some families struggle to find accommodations with State Veterans Home about to shut down

State lawmakers met Tuesday afternoon to discuss closing the State Veterans Home in Fayetteville.

As of Tuesday, that's scheduled to happen on Thursday, Feb. 1.

The families of some of the 85 Veterans who have called the facility home for several years have already moved their loved ones out.

During Tuesday's meeting, lawmakers said they need more information to decide if the current facility should be torn down and replaced or just repaired.

State senator Steve Jarvis was part of the meeting on Tuesday and said many lawmakers walked away from the meeting with more questions than answers.

"I was concerned that we did not even have [Lieutenant] General Gaskins there to answer or try to help us understand," Jarvis said. "Why were we not made aware that there were any issues, and that it was going to be shut down until such late, late notice?"

WRAL News spoke with the daughter of one of those Veterans who now travels two hours to see her father.

The State Veterans Home in Fayetteville is down the hill behind the VA Medical Center and complex on Ramsey Street, which makes it an ideal location for the home.

But it's been plagued with structural and mold problems since Hurricanes Matthew and Florence hit years ago.

"This building should be, you know what it is, 20, a couple odd years old [and] should have a life of 50, 60 [or] 70 years if it is properly maintained," said State Representative George Cleveland, who was not at the facility when multiple state senators and representatives visited it.

Cleveland did say he spoke to several members who were in attendance, and they informed him they did not see any troubling signs in brickwork around the building.

"If a building is falling apart like they say it is, you would see obvious signs of it," he said.

Jarvis said he did see some issues with the building, adding he conducted his own investigation an hour before state senators and representatives toured the facility.

"There are some [issues]. There are water issues that drainage ditches were clogged up [and] lack of continued maintenance," he said. "I think the majority of the issues could be solved form doing outside work to begin with."

Cleveland believes the decision to rebuild came from the people performing the evaluations over the years.

"It depends on how you ask for the evaluation to be done and who you asked to do it," he said. "If you ask a plumber to come and see if there's any problem here, he's probably going to find something. And that sounds like what happened here, whoever was doing the evaluation said 'Hey, let's tear it down and build a new one.'"

The home has beds to accommodate 80 Veterans. Just before Thanksgiving, families of the Veterans were notified the facility on Cochran Avenue would be temporarily shutting down Feb. 1.

That didn't give them much time to make arrangements to find new homes for their loved ones.

There are four full-service state Veteran homes in North Carolina. Louise Sweeney opted to have her father moved to the one in Kinston.

"He's the one that chose to be at the Veterans home," said Sweeney. "He served the country. He wanted to be in a Veterans home with fellow Veterans. I got to thinking about it and I thought, you know, it's about him, not about me."

Sweeney said it's a two-hour drive to the home in Kinston, meaning a visit that used to take 10 minutes has turned into a day-long event to see her father for just a few hours.

Some family members of other Veterans who moved their loved ones to local nursing homes are disappointed in the quality of care the Veterans are receiving.

One thing Sweeney and other Veteran families are hoping to hear - if their loved ones are around when the new Fayetteville State Veterans Home opens - is that they have priority to move their loved ones back to into a possible new facility.

Jarvis said he would like to see a deeper dive into the issues the facility is facing before making a final decision.

"I've requested every document, every repair order that's been ordered on that facility from the inception back in the 90s and I want a complete set of drawings," Jarvis said. "The ultimate goal s to make sure that our veterans are taken care of and that they are in a state-of-the-art facility and that our veterans that have been displaced, that all of their needs currently are being taken care of."

Jarvis said another meeting will be held on Feb. 27 and he hopes there will be further clarity on the issue.