Overall sentiment from the collected reviews is predominantly negative, with several recurring and serious concerns about the quality of care, management, sanitation, nutrition, and safety at Ferndale Assisted Living. While a minority of reviewers highlight positive interpersonal elements — notably that the owner Janet has been kind in some past interactions and a number of staff members are described as friendly or helpful — the bulk of the feedback details substantive operational and safety issues that would be important for prospective residents and families to investigate further.
Care quality and resident safety are primary areas of concern in these summaries. Multiple reviews allege neglectful behavior, including staff not checking on sick residents, inadequate responses to incidents, and overall poor care. There are mentions of specific violent incidents and unsafe occurrences where staff response was described as insufficient. Several reviewers also point to staff lacking training for mental-health needs, contributing to unsafe handling of residents with psychiatric or behavioral issues. These patterns suggest systemic problems with staffing competencies, incident response protocols, and monitoring of resident wellbeing.
Staff behavior and management practices are described inconsistently but often negatively. The administration is repeatedly characterized as toxic, money-focused, and in some reports verbally abusive. One or more reviewers explicitly describe the owner as abusive or delusional, and many mention staff disrespecting residents and ignoring requests. At the same time, some reviewers noted helpful or friendly staff, indicating uneven staff performance or perhaps changes in personnel over time. Overall, the managerial culture appears to be a significant source of dissatisfaction and a likely contributor to other operational failures reported.
Dining and nutrition are another consistent problem area. Reviews describe meals as poorly balanced, lacking fresh fruit and vegetables, and relying heavily on canned goods, pastas, and starches — a menu composition reviewers consider inadequate or unhealthy for an elderly population. Restricted meal times were also mentioned, which could be problematic for residents with variable needs or medical/dietary requirements. Given that nutrition is critical to seniors' health, these recurring complaints are a notable red flag.
Facility cleanliness and property management raise further concerns. Multiple summaries mention dirty bathrooms and poor sanitation overall, as well as property loss, breakage, and reports of personal items being thrown away or given to others. These reports point to weak housekeeping practices, lax property controls, and poor respect for residents' possessions. Combined with infection-control complaints (for example, not practicing social distancing), these sanitation issues amplify potential health risks.
Emotional and social impacts on residents are also reported. Several reviewers state that the environment negatively affected residents' mental health, leading to depression. Some people feel residents are effectively forced to remain there due to a lack of alternatives, which compounds the emotional distress. On the other hand, the small, home-like setting and occasional positive interactions with staff or the owner suggest that some residents may experience a more personal atmosphere — but this does not appear consistent enough to counterbalance the reported harms.
In summary, the reviews present a picture of a facility with meaningful strengths in limited-personalized attention and some compassionate staff, but with serious and repeated operational failings. Key red flags include alleged neglect and poor clinical oversight, unsafe incidents and insufficient incident response, inadequate nutrition, poor sanitation, property mishandling, and troubling reports about management conduct. Prospective residents and families should approach with caution: if considering Ferndale Assisted Living, prioritize an in-person tour focused on verifying staffing training and ratios, examining cleanliness and infection-control practices, reviewing menus and special-diet accommodations, asking for recent incident logs and how incidents were handled, checking policies on personal belongings, and requesting references from current families. These targeted inquiries will help assess whether the concerning patterns found in these reviews represent isolated incidents or ongoing systemic problems.
