The Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) is an independent establishment of the Executive Branch of the federal government that oversees two Continuing Care Retirement Community campuses for qualified veterans, one in Washington D.C., the other in Gulfport, Mississippi. The Gulfport campus was decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the facility’s 351 residents had to be relocated. The campus was rebuilt and opened again in October 2010. In 2005, controversy about AFRH erupted when a group of veterans living at the Washington D.C. campus filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that continuing budget cuts there were affecting the quality of health care. The suit was initially dismissed, but the dismissal was overturned; in 2010, a settlement was reached giving residents increased access to medical and dental care and prescription medicines.

In 1811, with the promise of caring for the military aging, infirm, and financially strapped, a charter was passed to establish a place to live in Philadelphia for Navy officers, sailors, and Marines. Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton led the efforts to bring it about, and it opened in 1834. Seventeen years later, a home in Washington D.C. was created for old and disabled soldiers. AFRH’s Washington facility was the site of Anderson Cottage, a retreat for several 19th century U.S. presidents, including Abraham Lincoln. Then in the late 1960s, when it was determined the Philadelphia facility could not be economically modernized and expanded, the Naval home was moved to Gulfport, Mississippi. In 1991 Congress passed a law incorporating the two campuses into an independent establishment in the Executive Branch of the federal government, under the umbrella of AFRH.

AFRH provides independent living, assisted living, and long-term care services in a community setting for qualified veterans. The only Continuing Care Retirement Community in the federal government, AFRH also operates a health and dental clinic for residents; provides an orderly transition when needed from independent living to assisted living or nursing care; serves meals; and offers a variety of other services, activities and recreation facilities, including a golf course and driving range, fitness room, banking center, post office, bowling alley, fishing ponds, auto shop, library, hair salon, theater, and bus tours to area attractions. Receiving no annual budget appropriation from Congress, AFRH is financed by a trust fund ($159 million at the end of 2007) made up of the 50 cent per month payroll deductions of active duty military personnel, fines and forfeitures from Armed Forces disciplinary actions, resident fees, and investment income from low-yield Treasury Bonds, with federal law prohibiting AFRH from soliciting contributions, applying for grants, or running capital fundraising campaigns.

Medical Employees Complain of Poor Conditions

Timothy Cox, who was named to the position by Donald Rumsfeld on August 12, 2002, received a BA from Bucknell in Lewisburg, PA, and a JD from Widener University in Wilmington, Delaware. Prior to becoming AFRH COO, Cox was senior vice-president of Operation Services at Sunrise Senior Living, which operates more than 440 assisted living homes in four countries. Cox has been embroiled in controversy ever since over the ways he has chosen to cut costs, from cutting staff to restructuring medical services and programs, to his choices on avenues to explore for expansion of the site to his raising the idea of seeking new routes for financing. Cox is also a member of the board of directors of Cultural Tourism DC.