Carlton at the Lake: Residents' Clothes Lost After Bed Bug Wash - IL
The inspection report, completed August 25, 2025, documents what happened after a certified nursing assistant brought the clothing belonging to R1 and R2 down to the laundry room. The administrator, identified in the report as V1, came down herself and told the laundry worker, V5, to wash the clothes right away and return them right away. V5 did exactly that. The whole process took about two and a half hours.
When the clothes were clean and dry, V5 wrote R1 and R2's names on a piece of paper and placed it inside each laundry bag. She put the bags on a table outside the laundry room. She called V1 to say the clothes were ready to be picked up. V1 told her someone would come down for them.
V5 left for the day. The next morning, the bags were gone from the table. She had not seen them since.
"Resident's clothes should not be kept for long periods of time and should be returned to them either the same day or by the next day," V5 told inspectors. She was clear that she had followed her instructions. The clothes should not be missing, she said, because she had done what V1 asked.
By the afternoon of August 24, 2025, V1 still could not say where the clothes were. She told inspectors she had spoken with the assistant administrator, V2, who told her he had brought R1 and R2's clothes to them directly. But V1 also told inspectors she currently did not know the location of R1 and R2's clothes and had to continue to follow up with the matter.
Those two things do not fit together cleanly. Either V2 delivered the clothes or the clothes are missing. V1 offered no resolution to the contradiction. She said only that if the facility was unable to locate R1 and R2's belongings, it would reimburse them within one week, because she wanted R1 and R2 to have clothes to wear.
The inspection was triggered by a complaint. Inspectors cited the facility for a violation of residents' rights, noting that residents have the right to keep and wear their own clothing and to keep and use their own property. The level of harm was documented as minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting a few residents.
What the report captures, underneath the regulatory language, is something more specific: two people living in a nursing home had their belongings taken from them under urgent circumstances, were given no clear accounting of what happened to those belongings, and were left waiting on a promise of reimbursement from the same administrator who couldn't explain where their clothes had gone.
V5 had done her job. She washed the clothes, dried them, labeled them, set them out, made the call. The breakdown happened somewhere between that table outside the laundry room and wherever V2 believed he had delivered them. Nobody in the facility's leadership could close that gap.
R1 and R2 were not named in the report. What they were left with, as of the inspection date, was an administrator's assurance that the facility would pay them back, eventually, for clothing they had every right to keep in the first place.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Carlton At the Lake, The from 2025-08-25 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: Official federal inspection data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Editorial process: AI-synthesized regulatory data, reviewed for accuracy by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: August 3, 2026 · Our methodology
CARLTON AT THE LAKE, THE in CHICAGO, IL was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 25, 2025.
The whole process took about two and a half hours.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.