P.G. Senior Living seeks to evict a 96-year-old tenant, despite her lifetime contract.

Jean Jacques, 96, heard a knock on her apartment door inside Pacific Grove Senior Living on Friday, Aug. 16. It was the manager, delivering a “nasty letter,” Jacques says, a three-day “pay or quit” eviction notice from the owner, Pacifica Senior Living. The letter claimed that Jacques, a 22-year resident, owes them over $109,000 in back rent and fees. She doesn’t have it.

“I’d be on the street. I wouldn’t even have a tent,” Jacques says, if Pacifica were successful in removing her. “I’d be in a bad way.”

Jacques says she has a “life contract” from the property’s previous owner, California-Nevada Methodist Homes, which stipulates that she is entitled to be cared for until she dies. She paid a $249,000 entrance fee in 2002 and then approximately $5,000 a month until her savings ran out, 16 years after moving in.

San Diego-based Pacifica purchased Forest Hill Manor from Methodist Homes in 2022 and renamed it Pacific Grove Senior Living. (The company also owns The Park Lane in Monterey.) The sale from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit company was approved by California Attorney General Rob Bonta with numerous conditions, including that Pacifica must honor residents’ existing contracts.

Several people and organizations are now helping Jacques, including Patricia McGinnis, founder of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, who retired recently but is working as an advocate. She describes Pacifica’s three-day notice as “grossly insufficient,” lacking certain requirements, such as a 30-day notice (Jacques’ contract stipulates 90 days), a court filing for unlawful detainer signed by a judge, facts explaining the reasons for eviction, and the effective date of the eviction.

It also failed to inform Jacques of her right to file a complaint with the state Department of Social Services, or to provide contact information for the nearest office of community care licensing and the state ombudsman.

“They haven’t followed any requirements of the law,” McGinnis says.

Pacifica representatives did not respond to a request for comment by the Weekly’s deadline.

“To do that to a 96-year-old woman… they should be ashamed of themselves,” McGinnis says.

The plan is to get Jacques connected to a senior law attorney and contest the three-day notice in court. Jacques says she’s not going anywhere. “They’ll have to drag me out of here screaming and hollering,” she says.