Despite negative headlines and high-profile closures by the state Dept. of Health (MDH), the number of group homes/assisted-living facilities is growing at an accelerating rate.
From MPR News,
Five group homes. Two scandals. Health Department program under microscope.
MPR reports,
On Thursday, the Health Department revoked the licenses of three group homes where Sekou Dukuly, a high-ranking government official in Liberia, was licensed as the group home’s director up until last week…
…The Health Department also revoked the licenses of two group homes unrelated to Dukuly following allegations from prosecutors that Homefelt Assisted Living facilities were connected to a sex trafficking operation in the Twin Cities.
You read that correctly. A Liberian government bigwig is running group homes in Minnesota from across the ocean, taking in tens of millions of dollars of American-taxpayer money.
The second set of closures is a reference to homes owned by Andrea Sampson, a former Anoka County prosecutor, accused in court filings (p. 10) of being a commercial sex worker herself.
The Sampson-owned home located on University Ave. NE,
Despite the high-profile closure of five homes this week, the total net number of state-licensed facilities went up, not down at the end of the week.
When I first checked on Thursday (August 20), the number of MDH-licensed assisted-living, facilities stood at 2,527. The number of those holding provisional licenses (open for less than a year) stood at 363.
Yesterday, that number ticked up to 364. Today, it stands at 367, with the net total at 2,531. If that rate of exponential growth were to continue (new approvals tripling each day), the entire state population would be living in group homes by the end of this month, August 31.
Perhaps Friday was just a big day for approvals. But 367 out of 2,531 means that almost 15 percent of all of the state’s facilities have been open for less than a year. We can’t keep growing at 15 percent a year, can we? Where are these residents coming from?
MPR notes that MDH only began licensing these facilities in 2021. Previously, that task was performed by the state Dept. of Human Services (MDH).
MPR reports,
No matter which state agency licenses the group homes, the Department of Human Services pays the bills, because it administers the state’s Medicaid program, also called Medical Assistance.
As the economist Herbert Stein once said,
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
But when?
