Assisted living and board and care placement in San Pedro

San Pedro is a community of the City of Los Angeles, not a city of its own, and it has a shape you do not find elsewhere in the South Bay: the harbor and the Port of Los Angeles on the east, ocean bluffs on the south, and hill slopes on the west and north along the Rancho Palos Verdes border.

That shape decides where the housing is. The city's San Pedro Community Plan says single-family homes are mostly in the southern and western parts of the community, and apartments and other multi-family buildings are concentrated in the central and eastern parts, closer to downtown and the waterfront. It also notes that most of the housing is more than 40 years old, and that the oldest neighborhoods sit near the harbor. Vinegar Hill, a city historic district, is one of them.

For a family, that usually means two different searches. Board and care homes, licensed in California as residential care facilities for the elderly (RCFEs), are small homes inside ordinary houses, so you would expect to find them on the residential streets to the south and west. Larger assisted living communities are bigger buildings, closer to an apartment community with care staff. Hamssa can tell you what is open in each part of town when you call.

It starts with a conversation about your parent: care needs, health conditions, daily habits, the people who visit, and the monthly budget. From that, Hamssa puts together a short list of homes that fit, in San Pedro or a few minutes away in Harbor City, Rancho Palos Verdes or Torrance if that widens the choice.

She schedules the tours and goes on them with you, helps you talk terms with the home, and checks in after the move. Her background is in palliative care, hospice care and home health, and she holds an RCFE Administrator Certificate, so she knows what questions to ask about care. She refers families only to homes licensed by the State of California that she has toured herself, after checking each one’s licensing record for citations and complaints.

Hamssa's placement help is free for families. The page on whether senior placement is free explains how that works. If you already know a small home is what you want, start with board and care placement.

The search often starts during a hospital stay. Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center San Pedro is the hospital inside the community. Others are discharged from Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center in Harbor City or from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center on West Carson Street.

When the hospital says your mother cannot go back to living alone, the case manager or social worker will ask where she is going and when. Hamssa has worked with families in exactly that position and has coordinated with case workers and social workers during discharge. She has no formal tie to any hospital. She works for the family.

• Ask the case manager for the expected discharge date and what help your parent will need each day.
• Ask whether a stay in rehabilitation or skilled nursing comes first. That is a different kind of facility from assisted living, and the hospital arranges it.
• Call Hamssa as early as you can, so tours can happen before the discharge date, not after.

Monthly cost depends on the home, the room and the level of care, so two homes a mile apart in San Pedro can be priced very differently. The guide to board and care costs in California explains what is usually included and what is billed as extra care.

Every RCFE is licensed and monitored by the California Department of Social Services. Before you sign anything, look the home up yourself. The guide on how to check an RCFE license walks through the state's public facility search and what its records show. For help near discharge, see hospital discharge placement.

Hamssa's office is in Torrance, and she works with families across San Pedro by phone, text or WhatsApp at 310-594-0694 and in person on tours. Have a rough idea of the budget, a list of current medications or diagnoses, and the names of the neighborhoods you would like to stay close to.

If memory loss is part of the picture, say so at the start: it changes which homes belong on the list, and memory care placement covers how. When you are ready, contact Hamssa and tell her what is happening.