Speaking from experience, the only people who can afford to live as nursing home staff (typically LPNs) are the poor. In my metro area, only the presence of a large low-income high-crime area allows for a low enough cost of living for its residents to survive on nursing home pay. I think these folks can make more working at McDonalds. The quality of care is garbage... Less than 10% of nursing homes in my area provide the care I'd want for my relatives.

Oddly enough, even homes that advertise RNs and a high number of staff still don't provide the care I'd want for me relatives. The only homes I've been to where the staff are genuinely great are nursing homes out in the boonies, in rural areas at least an hour outside of my city.

I can echo this statement. My mother is in a nursing home facility for the last 8 years.

She is located in the facility she worked in as a poor laborer before becoming a resident. The facility is over an hour from the nearest metro area.

The care she receives there is pretty good. The staff are mostly locals in the rural town and are comfortable being poor and living that life.

We considered moving her into the city to be close to family who have to drive almost 3 hours to see her but the care is so bad in the city it isn’t worth it.

We have had family members in city nursing homes and they’re abysmal. Which to some level I get. The people there like you stated are underpaid and overworked. They live in bad neighborhoods because of systemic poverty. They bring all the stress of being poor in a metro city with them to work. Quality of care plummets but there’s nothing that can be done because no one is going to pay more than bare minimum to reach mandatory staff minimums.

> The quality of care is garbage... Less than 10% of nursing homes in my area provide the care I'd want for my relatives.

As a paramedic who delivered probably thousands of patients to (and picked up patients from) nursing homes, I'd unfortunately absolutely agree. Not always to the point of filing complaints, but not great.

> Oddly enough, even homes that advertise RNs and a high number of staff still don't provide the care I'd want for me relatives.

As that same paramedic, absolutely, you know why?

Many of those homes have ONE RN as the supervisor for a bunch of LPNs and CNAs. And they have policies/insurance/whatever that say "anything larger than a bandaid, call 911 and have them deal with it", which leads to ridiculous situations where you have two nurses standing around while my partner and I bandage a straightforward laceration.

Those are usually the ones advertising out front "Round the clock nursing care" (and absolutely charging for it).

There was an article here in HN how nurses and nursing home staff in a lot of US are basically using an "uber for Nursing" app where you get a request and you can accept it or not......but the company that built it has a "desperation" score on every nurse and the more desperate they are estimated to be, the less money they are offered for the job - the logic being that they are not in a position to refuse.

Honestly, the article literally made me want to vomit. I'm not religious but our society has sacrificed everything human in the worship of mammon.