Latest / On Deathcare / Illinois Crackdowns, Aging Mausoleums, and the High-End Pitch for Private Estates

Transcript

Illinois Crackdowns, Aging Mausoleums, and the High-End Pitch for Private Estates · On Deathcare

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I am Tony Russo from On Deathcare,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: and this is The Rest, your weekly rundown of news from around the funeral industry.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a ton of stuff to talk to you about this week.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I have more to talk to you about than I have time to talk about it.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what I started doing last week was publishing on Wednesday a blog post
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: that I call Beyond The Rest, your weekly Deathcare News Roundup.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is available only to subscribers, paid or not.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to get it in your email box.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't publish it on the website.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you'd like to make sure you don't miss any stories, go to ondeathcare.com and subscribe.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can subscribe at any level from zero to more than zero.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are a subscriber,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I will send you this email Wednesday,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: which is a bulleted link post,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I guess, to all of the stories and more that I'm going over today.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much any Story about funeral service that I got my hands on over the course
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: of the week will be out Wednesday morning in the inbox of subscribers.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So again, please consider going to OnDeathCare.com to subscribe.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we get into it,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to thank my paid subscribers who make all of this possible.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your support, and let's get into it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So back on August 4th,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I got an email from a person who wished to remain anonymous,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: and the subject line was Chicago Needs Help.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a person who's been working in Chicago cemeteries for a long time,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: and they went on to describe deteriorating conditions that were bothering them.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they may or may not have been a problem legally or even Ethically,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: but there were some aesthetic concerns that this person raised,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: and we are working to take a look into what we can do to help out there.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason it was interesting is because right after that,
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: there started to be some more breaking news about body mishandling problems in
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: the Chicagoland area.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: The first was that authorities are investigating South Chicago Chapel,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: A far south side funeral home after officials discovered more
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: than 50 decomposing bodies improperly stored in unrefrigerated
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: and unsanitary conditions.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: The second one which came to light for me this morning on August 10th
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: as I'm recording this was the Bohemian National Cemetery and Crematorium in Chicago.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, was shut down following allegations of improper storage.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the first case, the place was completely shut down.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: In the second place,
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: in the case of the Bohemian National Cemetery and Crematorium,
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: there was a temporary shutdown and all of the bodies that had not been cremated have
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: since been cremated and returned to the families.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of links in the show notes if you want to dig
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: into those two stories,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: but what I wanted to point out was there have been a lot of headlines suggesting
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: that regulations have failed to prevent all of these problems,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: and we know that it's not the case that regulations fail to prevent all
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: the problems,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: and I would suggest that regulations,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: if anything, have Made it more likely that bad actors will get caught.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the new rules in Illinois for when and how to shut down
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: a funeral home don't officially, I guess, go into effect until January 2027.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that what we are seeing is we're seeing more stringent enforcement with
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: the idea that They know that this law is coming.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So as it stands like today,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: quote, officially, unquote, you can't go into a funeral home and shut it down.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go in and give them a warning.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next time you can come in and shut it down.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if these places had warnings in the past,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm starting to think that it probably doesn't matter.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: If they are getting complaints, they're responding to them, which is a good thing.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're not not responding to them, which was a bad thing that was going on in the past.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So as I said, when the first story broke, don't expect to see more.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now that this second story has broken,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I will just reiterate,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: don't think it's a problem if you are seeing more enforcement actions in Illinois.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: There is a correction because the way that it used to work is they had a list.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: They knew the funeral homes that weren't in great shape and they had a sense
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: of some funeral homes that were in trouble,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: but there was no real mechanism for them to They could send letters
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: until things got too far gone.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is going away now,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: and I think that's what we're seeing in these enforcement actions is when there's
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: a complaint, someone's going to at least show up today and check on it today.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's a problem and they want to shut you down and you want to complain
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: that you shouldn't be shut down,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there's a mechanism for that too,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm sure they're happy to help you,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: or not help you, but to let you find that mechanism on your own.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's horrible what's happened.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it's heartening that they're doing this big kind of cleanup in Illinois
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: because it may be necessary.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'll link to that story in the show notes.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And speaking of cemetery conditions,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: a Norfolk,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Virginia family accused SCI-owned Woodlawn Funeral Home and Memorial Gardens
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: of ongoing neglect,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: citing persistent water leaks,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: pest infestations,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: and unpleasant odors inside the mausoleum that the family is visiting.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a large mausoleum.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it was built in the 1970s, so it doesn't necessarily have all the same air controls.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: The woman who is complaining,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: her name is Beth Quinn,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: and she says that every time she goes,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: there's moisture on the floor near her parents' resting place,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: despite the fact that she has constantly, or regularly rather, complained about it.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: She feels like it's an unhealthy situation.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Woodlawn responded to the television reporter's requests to point out that
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: the funeral home,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: the mausoleum,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: was built in the 1970s and that it was repaired to eliminate or I guess
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: at least reduce water intrusion about a year ago back in So
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: if there are further problems,
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: they, I feel like, aren't going to be able to address them.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, this is one of those things where the TV folks have their hooks in.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess we will find out before too long whether that answer was satisfying
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: to Ms. Quinn or whether there will be more follow-up.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be interesting to see how When you say that you've fixed up
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: a mausoleum,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: then if there's genuinely no more you can do, that's an interesting problem.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think that would be a fun feature.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I will do one.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as a way to,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I guess,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: kind of close out our Cemetery and Mausoleum section of the news this week,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you the story about Worth Magazine.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm putting out a longer story in the next week or so about large cemetery sales
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: and how EverStory and SCI both came out last week talking about how they wanted
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: to improve their large cemetery sales.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in a coincidence,
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: that is no way a coincidence,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: there was a story in Worth Magazine about the Frank E.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Campbell, the funeral chapel, and its renovation and celebration of its 125th year.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's, you know, God bless them, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, if I live to be 125, maybe I'll celebrate for three or four years after the fact.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the larger point of the story,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: and this is a story directed directly at wealthy people,
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: is there is a better way to spend your money than the way you think you're going
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: to spend it before you die.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And having your own private estate or mausoleum is the way to go.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: The headline says,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: the last part of the headline is William Villanova on Legacy,
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Privacy, and What Outlasts Wealth.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that What Outlasts Wealth is probably the pitch of the century for selling these mausoleums.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Frankie Campbell is for the New York elites, the literal East Coast elites.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And to think about their pitch, like, yes,
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: you can have whatever you want,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: but can you have whatever you want after you're dead?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: To a point, you can.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to spoil too much of my story
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: because I've got some really cool things that I'm going to put into it.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are a subscriber,
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: it will be in your inbox probably next Thursday, whatever that is, the 20th.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Either the 20th or the 27th.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the next two weeks,
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have this story out and I think is a really interesting take
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: on large sales in cemeteries.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a link to this Worth story, which you absolutely should read.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is...
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not advertorial, it is borderline advertorial.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is very salesy.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're interested in thinking about how to sell mausoleums effectively,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are some great keys in there for you.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So take a look at that.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Link in the show notes.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So my notes on this story are listed under the heading.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: It says, this is preposterous.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Authorities discovered additional human remains at
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: an illegally operated funeral home in New York that officials shuttered back
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: in January.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried to follow the follow-up and I couldn't find very much on it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: WPIX News 11 in New York is apparently still trying to follow up on it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems as if when the police removed the
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so literally eight months later at the end
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: of summer they were pulling more bodies out of this funeral home.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: The reporting gives me the impression that there were There's a link
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: the show notes,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: so by the time you read this or hear this,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: you may be able to find out what happened.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just if there are any police listening, check the hearses.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: When you're getting all of the bodies out of a funeral home, check the hearses.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Check all the places where a body could be because there could be one there
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: and you would hate to miss one for nine months.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And how...
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: There must have been genuinely an inventory where they're like,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: oh, well, where are these two bodies?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the person who was in trouble said, oh, those were in the hearse.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: How did you miss them?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, it's, like I said, preposterous.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a link in the show notes.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Alabama funeral director Wilkie Sherrod Friesen has publicly opposed
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: the State Senate Bill 107, labeling the proposed legislation a tax on death.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: The bill would allow Alabama Board of Funeral Service to collect administrative fees
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: from funeral homes for each service they arranged,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: along with raising various licensing costs.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: You should read this story.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm under the impression that they're asking for something like $10 per service,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: but what Mr.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Friesen does is he breaks down what that would really cost to families and what
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: that really looks like.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: He goes into what the wage gap looks like in Alabama.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: He goes into what the costs in Alabama currently are and He objects that
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: the Alabama Board of Funeral Service needs to make more money.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: If they need to make more money,
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: then they should get it as part of a tax bill instead of this end-around fee raise.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, take a look at this story.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think...
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: It makes an excellent argument.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: If nothing else, it's a textbook.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: How do you address problems with the Funeral Service Board when you have to do it publicly?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Link in the show notes.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in other Alabama news,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Dale County officials have established a formal indigent burial policy
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: to standardize final Disposition Services for Deceased Residents
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Who Lacked Financial Resources,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Insurance, or Available Relatives to Cover End-of-Life Costs.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is interesting because it does tie directly back to Mr.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Friesen's article, which addresses this very problem.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: When it is incumbent upon a person to...
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Pay for this final service,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: and certainly not that it's not worth it,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: but the pressure It makes people feel like it's the funeral directors who are kind
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: of forcing this issue when it doesn't necessarily have to be.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when families can't afford to pay for a funeral,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: there's always this kind of worry,
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: bad enough to not be able to bury your grandmother,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: but then to feel like you somehow are less of a person for not being able to Afford
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: a funeral.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And these are just some of the issues that are covered in this.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm also very interested in indigent rules in general.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they can reveal a lot about a society.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that if you look at the different indigent rules for the different states,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: and they vary so widely, it's really interesting to see who Who does what for whom?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, in a lot of states, especially in a lot of rural states, it's a county by county.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like here, it's a county by county issue.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And each county just has to decide how much they have to afford to pay for people who can't.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: since it is a poor county versus rich county kind of proposition,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: the poorer the county,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: the less they can afford to to bury their indigents and also
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: the more indigents they're likely to have.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, there's a link to this story in the show notes.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that will do it for this time.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: The rest has been an On Deathcare production.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was written, edited, videoed, transmogrified, all the stuff by me.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Having a blast doing it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me for these half hour, 20 minutes or so.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: It means very much to me to see all of the downloads and to get all the responses that I get.
• 16:54
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• 16:59
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• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: that I'm making here, which I think it's important.
• 17:05
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• 17:07
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• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like I am, please let me know.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Send me an email.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can reach me at bytonyrusso at gmail.com.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is B-Y-T-O-N-Y-R-U-S-S-O at gmail.com.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And as always,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: thank you again and again and always and over to my paid subscribers
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: who make it possible for me to make this show and who give me the incentive
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: to continue to try to do a better job and to try to put out as much as I can to earn
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: the time and attention and money that many of you have given me.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that.
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• 17:47
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• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we will check in with you again next time.