City, state officials work to help residents, workers at a Mission Hill nursing home planning on closing, where workers have had their paychecks bounce

City councilors yesterday denounced management at the Edgar P. Benjamin Healthcare Center, 120 Fisher Ave. on Mission Hill, for the way it's planning to close by July 1, frightening residents and delaying or bouncing employee paychecks.

Councilors say the city has started working with state officials, including state Rep. Sam Montaño and state Sen. Liz Miranda, to see if there are ways to keep the Benjamin Center open, possibly even through receivership.

The center formally notified the state earlier this month that it plans to close July 1. The state Division of Health Care Facility Licensure and Certification has scheduled a hearing for March 12, starting at 6 p.m. in its Marlborough office (telephone access via 800-857-5123, passcode: 8554964).

In a filing with the state, Benjamin Administrator Tony Francis says the center was already on shaky financial ground when the pandemic hit and that it was simply unable to recover.

But City Councilors Ben Weber (Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury), Henry Santana (at large) and Sharon Durkan (Mission Hill, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway) raised the specter of a mini-Steward and said it's particularly outrageous that Francis has seen his annual salary pay increase from $180,000 to $620,000 in recent years - even as the center's financial conditions were supposedly worsening.

Now, the center's 76 residents "are scared they will be left out on the street," Weber said, pointing to such things as Benjamin administrators demanding residents pay $1 a page for copies of their medical records.

Santana said he visited the nursing home last week and that residents are "very stressed and frustrated."

He added, "housing is a human right .. and these are people's homes."

The center was started in 1927 by Edgar Benjamin, a Jewish lawyer and civil-rights activist who wanted to see an old-age home open to all at a time when most were segregated. Today, most of the residents are of color, Weber said.