In Connecticut, various services have suffered under private equity ownership, resulting in neglect of patients, cuts in staffing, increased rents and inadequate maintenance, legislators, residents and activists shared recently.
Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney has called for the legislature to restrict private equity in the health care, nursing homes, housing, child care and special education industries, saying its role in essential public services is “dangerous and toxic as a matter of public policy.”
Looney said legislators are looking to put “limits on private equity ownership in a number of areas because of the fact that it has proven so toxic in areas that are really of major concern to the public welfare.”
Hospitals and Health Care
The Senate passed legislation Wednesday that would prohibit hospitals from entering into sale-leaseback transactions, which involve a company selling a hospital’s building and land on its main campus, then forcing it to pay rent for its use.
The bill would also require hospitals to annually attest to the Department of Public Health that no private equity entity has a controlling interest in the hospital.
SB 196 was passed in a 27 to 9 vote, with nine Republicans voting against the bill.
Sen. Saud Anwar, co-chair of the Public Health Committee, who led passage of the bill, said the bill would give legislators the opportunity “to safeguard the core of the health care system, to look at healing versus financial exploitation.
“And it would allow us to reclaim health care for patients and not for profiteers,” Anwar said.
Sen. Jeff Gordon, a Woodstock Republican and physician, said he voted against the bill because he believed that it did not go far enough in restricting private equity.
When Prospect Medical Holdings filed for bankruptcy in January 2025, Manchester Memorial, Waterbury Hospital and Rockville General had already seen years of inadequate staffing and financial challenges.
In 2019, Prospect, a private equity company, sold the land and buildings from the hospitals to Medical Properties Trust, the second largest owner of hospital real estate in the world.
“Four hundred and fifty seven million dollars was taken out of those assets and given to investors — in fact, investors who included physicians who were originally running Prospect as a management service organization,” said Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, a Fairfield Democrat and co-chair of the Public Health Committee during the forum. “That money did not go back to the patients. It did not go back to the community.”
McCarthy Vahey said patients were left in harm’s way.
The United States Senate Committee on the Budget conducted a study that included Prospect that found that private equity in health care prioritized profits over patient care.
Marilyn Anthony, a nurse at Waterbury Hospital, said during the forum that when Prospect took over, staff received an email from Prospect that they should refer to patients as customers and were given a directive to change bed linens only every third day unless visibly soiled.
Looney told the Courant that restriction of private equity is important in areas such as child care, housing and nursing homes.
“It is dangerous to have ownership in the hands of an entity whose primary driving force is a profit to virtually the exclusion of nearly everything else,” he said. “You’re dealing with people’s lives, with their health, the welfare of children.”
Liz Dupont-Diehl, associate director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, said at the forum that “private equity is squeezing our society to extract profits for a few at the expense of everybody else.”
Nursing Homes
“In the past week in a private equity nursing home, one woman was found with a totally broken wrist,” said Rep. Jane Garibay, a Windsor Democrat and co-chair of the Aging Committee at the forum.
“Another one had a bed sore on her head that was so deep it had gone into the cranium,” said Garibay. “This is one week because there is not enough staffing. There are not enough people to oversee, as we will hear in these discussions. It is important we look at it. We know it is happening. How do we fix it?”
Garibay said private equity firms in a big majority of nursing homes “buy, strip and flip” the properties.
Mairead Painter, the state’s long-term care ombudsman, told the Courant that almost all nursing homes have some level of private equity investment in them.
Lawmakers are considering legislation that would require private equity firms that own nursing homes to produce “investor names, business addresses, and thorough financial details to the Department of Social Services every year,” according to testimony from Senate Democrats in support of SB 125.
“Additionally, any private equity entity firm with a real estate investment trust will not be permitted to sell or offload any nursing home property until five years after purchase unless the Commissioner of Public Health finds that doing so will increase patient wellbeing or facility stability,” said the Senate Democrats.
Painter said SB 125 would provide more transparency about the funding streams of nursing homes.
Housing
Ebony Glover was living at Concierge Apartments in Rocky Hill, which is owned by a private equity company, JRK, when water began leaking under her bathroom floor. It went on for four months and, she said, she submitted multiple maintenance requests but no repairs were made.
“Over time the condition got worse,” she said at the forum. “At one point I had mushrooms growing in my bathroom because of the moisture and unresolved leak. It is a serious health concern.”
Due to poor insulation in the apartment, she was often freezing even though the heat was up to 80 degrees, she said.
The owner of the apartment complex agreed to give tenants $5.1 million in cash payments and waived rent and utility bills after a series of water line breaks, flooding and electrical failures led the town to declare the buildings unsafe and hundreds of residents were displaced for weeks this winter.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong revealed the settlement agreement with JRK Property Holdings, owner of Concierge Apartments in Rocky Hill, in February. Tong opened an investigation into Concierge management on Feb. 9 and under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act demanded detailed records regarding tenant complaints, work orders, inspection reports, leases, relocation efforts, and documentation regarding repairs.
Legislators are considering a bill that would require a 75-day waiting period for private equity companies to offer to purchase one or two-family homes, according to the bill.
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