Not-for-profit continuing care retirement / life plan communities are well poised to survive in the wake of Hurricane Helene, Fitch Ratings’ Margaret Johnson told the McKnight’s Business Daily on Friday.

Johnson is the senior director and US life plan community group head at the ratings firm.

“We talk about margin, and we talk about credit quality and all these financial things, but when push really comes to shove, these not-for-profit institutions really take their mission very seriously to serve their residents,” Johnson said, “and so in times like these, you really see everybody sort of coming out to help.”

Johnson said the biggest complaints after the hurricane seem to be lack of electricity, water, internet service and cellular service. Fortunately, she said, most CCRCs have generators, “if not for the whole community, [then] at least in their skilled nursing [segment], so they’re able to continue to provide healthcare, and the residents aren’t too disrupted.”

Disruptions from the weather shouldn’t affect the bottom line, according to Johnson. CCRCs continue to have a revenue stream, even from residents who chose to relocate during the storm. Those residents, at minimum, would have to pay partial rent for the month, she noted.

“So from a revenue perspective, they continue to get some inflow, which allows them to continue to provide services and meals and all that sort of stuff,” Johnson said.

Reflecting on lessons learned from Hurricane Ian in 2022, she said, long-term care facilities tend to be among the first businesses to get attention from insurance adjusters as well as advisers, to help them apply for relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It is a disruption, but from the spectrum of who’s going to be impacted the most for the longest, I would say [life plan communities] usually are pretty resilient to these types of things. …They continue to provide services as best they can,” Johnson said. “They tend to get attention from insurance adjusters in FEMA because they’re serving the elderly.”

In general, according to Fitch Ratings, public finance issuers’ ratings should largely remain stable in spite of property damages.

“While the full extent of property damage in the Southeast will not be known for weeks, Fitch is monitoring various US public finance credits affected by the hurricane,” the credit rating agency reported Friday.