What’s Behind the Gilded Doors of Aegis Senior Living?

Allegations of Labor Violations and Neglect, and the CEO at the Heart of it All

Conor Kelley in The Stranger (thanks to Ed M.)

Aegis Living in Laurelhurst. Joe Mabel

If you’ve seen old folks’ homes with a certain Cheesecake Factory aesthetic popping up around Washington, you know Aegis Living. A private pay assisted living chain that does not accept Medicare, Aegis owns $2.5 billion in property across Washington, California, and Nevada, including 23 “luxury” senior living centers in the Seattle area. Aegis’ CEO claims that the company brings in nearly $250 million in annual operating revenues from resident costs that can climb into the tens of thousands of dollars per month. Living at Aegis appears to be worth it, though: in March, their Greenwood facility was named the number one senior living facility in the country.

With Medicaid cuts threatening to shut down many of our elder care facilities in the Pacific Northwest, there’s never been a better time to get to know our local retirement home landlord.

To understand Aegis Living, you need to know about Dwayne J. Clark, the charismatic CEO driving the company’s vision. Clark has done a good job of building his mythology. In puff pieces like his most recent in Seattle Magazine, he talks about a childhood marked by hardship: His father left when he was five, and Clark’s mother raised him and his three siblings in Lewiston, ID, before relocating to Spokane, WA. He and his three siblings didn’t have much. In a story Clark recounts often, his family struggled so badly once that his mother, a line cook at the Elks Lodge in Lewiston, smuggled home a handful of potatoes from work and turned them into soup that sustained the family for a week.

If you believe his PR efforts, Dwayne J. Clark was a bootstrappin’ young kid who was so inspired by his mother’s hardships that he made it his life’s mission to give our aging seniors more dignified lives—a serious and noble endeavor.

But the truth is uglier. And weirder.

It appears Clark is another classic American huckster who repeats half-truths and outright fabrications, never letting the truth get in the way of a good story while he does the opposite of what he claims: making elder care less accessible and making a fortune on the backs of underpaid workers.

Inside Clark’s gaudy Aegis facilities are vulnerable elderly folks paying exorbitant costs to be treated by a constantly revolving team of low-paid workers and third-party contractors, causing dangerous conditions that have led to multimillion-dollar lawsuits, hundreds of complaints to the state, felony criminal charges—and questions about who will take care of us when we get old. (continued)