Deadly Massachusetts Fire underlines the minimal regulations that governing the assisted way of life.

By Michael Casey and Michelle R. Smith

The assisted facility in Massachusetts, in which a deadly fire killed nine people, took care of dozens of aging residents who rely on wheelchairs and oxygen tanks. However, the security measures and most of the personnel requirements that are common in nursing homes were missing.

Gabriel House in the River case, about 80 kilometers south of Boston, offered a kind of residential buildings for older residents that have been expanded nationwide in recent decades. However, supporters argue that the lack of federal regulations and stained state rules lead to the sector largely left to the police itself.

“The real problem is that assisted life in an environment such as the Wild West operates,” said Richard Mollot, Executive Director of the Long-Sorge Care Community Coalition, a non-profit organization that is committed to improved care in nursing and supported living facilities. “You can do pretty impossible what you want, and that leads to minica aesthesis every day.”

The fire that tore through the three -story structure in the late Sunday threw a number of questions on the conditions in the dilapidated facility and focused on the growing number of centers of assisting life in the state and nationwide.

The Assisted Living, founded in the 1980s, was marketed as an option for older adults who need help, but not as much help as a nursing home. Proponents argue that the regulations for the facilities are no longer maintained because more locations have been opened.

For example, nursing homes are subject to the federal regulations because they receive Medicare and Medicaid, while there are no federal regulations for assisted living institutions. Nursing homes must have a minimum number of employees and trained medical specialists such as doctors and nurses.

“The regulations are minimal,” said Liane Zeitz, a lawyer who is also a member of the State Commission for Assisted Life, a body that was created to make recommendations about the sector. It has campaigned for further regulations for assisted living.

The facilities were easily regulated because they were initially considered a residential building, with a lower level of care and less surveillance, she said. But now these facilities take care of a population, “that is much more frail and the population is growing.”

The regulations are not only weaker for facilities for supported lifespan, but the supporters argue that the enforcement of the existing rules is often loose.

Paul Lanzikos, a former secretary for older matters of Massachusetts and co -founders of the Advocacy Group Dignity Alliance, described a “patchwork” of regulations across the country, with different agencies involved, depending on the state.

“Some of the states are much more regulated. Some are regulated as healthcare companies. Others, as we do here in Massachusetts, apply as a residential building model,” he said.

The US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been committed to increased supervision for years, especially after the publication of reports on health and security problems in 2018.

“These are serious problems that have been taking place for years,” she said at a hearing last year. “But we hear so much less about what is going on in facilities in relation to supported lifespan than in other facilities such as nursing homes.”

During this hearing, Mollot found that scandals in the nursing home industry urged the congress in the 1970s and 1980s and that such a settlement could soon be made for assisted life. He described two main risks: increasingly sick and in need of protection in need of assisted living and financial exploitation by owner investors.

Molllot spoke on Wednesday after he had learned something about Gabriel House Fire and said that the problems that the facility in Massachusetts were not unique.

“In contrast to nursing homes, a company life has no federal state requirements, no requirements for personnel, no requirements for the training of the staff, no requirements for security protocols, no requirements for inspections,” he said. “This falls into the states and the states have very weak rules overall.”

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Associated Press Writers Holly Ramer and Matt O'Brien contributed to this report.

Originally published: July 16, 2025 at 12:30 p.m. Edt