Minnesota's housing stabilization program has ended. What happens to Minnesotans that used it?

NINA MOINI: Well, on Friday, the state of Minnesota ended its Housing Stabilization Services Program, or HSS, which was intended to help people with disabilities find and maintain housing using federal Medicaid dollars. Let's look at how we got here for a moment. In August, the Department of Human Services announced the state would be ending the Housing Stabilization Program after finding credible allegations of fraud. Then, in September, the Department of Justice charged eight people for their roles in what prosecutors describe as a, quote, "massive fraud scheme" tied to the program. And now the program is entirely shut down.

In Sherburne County in Central Minnesota, that means nearly 200 residents who were receiving services through the Housing Stabilization Services Program no longer have access to those resources. So what happens to those residents now? Here to break that down for us is Tony Masters, Sherburne county's Adult and Disability Services Manager. Thanks so much for your time this afternoon, Tony.

TONY MASTERS: Welcome. Great to be here. Just wanted to start, you are accurate in saying that we had around 200 individuals that were receiving services through this program at the time that the notification came out in August. That really had us scrambling to figure out who was being served through this program because it doesn't require that people have social service involvement to be open to this program.

About 1/3 of the individuals we found were open to other forms of case management, which meant that we did already have a connection to those individuals. And with those folks, we spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what other service providers were involved with these individuals to try and fill that gap, at least on a temporary basis of helping to find and maintain the housing. We don't want people falling through the cracks, but we also only know so many of them.

One of the things that was unique with the HSS program is that it didn't require social service involvement. So we do have two housing social workers at Sherburne County. And what we've seen since the announcement came out in August with the Housing Stabilization Service Program being intended to be terminated, which has since happened, we started getting inundated with phone calls from the individuals that were being served through this program, trying to figure out what does this mean for us.

And for those that were connected to case management, for the most part, we were able to get other service providers in there so they know exactly what's happening because they have services, such as ARMS, which is Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services. Or in the waiver world, that's for individuals with disabilities. And over 65 folks, they may have in-home staff coming in. So we have shifted some of that work as we can to willing providers. Sometimes it's outside the scope of what they normally do, but people want to help where they can.

In Sherburne County, we also had I think it was around 50 individuals that were served by HHS but also with a provider that has what was called a housing support agreement. And the Housing Support Program was a funding stream, and we had two different HSS providers that were administering that program. And it helps to offset the cost of rent for individuals with disabilities and those over the age of 65. And there was some confusion that that program was being discontinued as well. So we had to verify, no, that one isn't being discontinued. But we also need to find somebody else to administer that program for those individuals being served. So we did have to move at least one of our agreements to another agency in order to keep those going, that funding stream.

Now, there's likely a lot of folks that were being served that haven't reached out to us, and we don't have contact information. We do have the housing staff that are doing their best to serve everybody that's in the greatest need. However, we've seen a 220% increase in the volume of calls for housing resources and assistance in finding housing since August 1. So what ends up happening when these programs get terminated is the lead agencies or counties are the ones that have to figure out, how are we going to serve these people the best? And I know we are anticipating that there'll be a new program that will be rolled out. But when you're talking about the bureaucracy of both state and federal government, we don't know when that will actually happen.

So in the interim, it's going to look a lot like it did before this program actually existed. And what I saw back then was you had a lot of people that might qualify for a different form of case management. Sometimes it's adult mental health case management. Sometimes it's vulnerable adult developmental disability case management. Sometimes it's home and community-based waiver case management. But in the end, the majority of these people will probably be seeking out services through the county for one of those services. So there is a capacity issue that's probably going to build at all counties in relation to this service.

NINA MOINI: So what I'm hearing from you, honestly, Tony, is just overwhelm at how much people are going through right now and the responsibility that then you feel has fallen on the county. And just piecemealing things together, it sounds like more for people trying to get creative, acting as though the program may not come back in the same form because you don't know how long it's going to be halted for these investigations. I wonder, from your perspective, what would be helpful to help catch fraud earlier in some of these human service programs because Governor Walz has said, because there's been so much fraud and they don't even where to start to investigate stuff, that's why halting the program is the way to go?

But then, folks like yourself say, well, we weren't doing anything bad or wrong or committing fraud. What about all of these people that are now in a more difficult situation? And what about the strain on the county? So this is something that we're hearing from so many people. And I just wonder, what would it take to catch fraud earlier so that steps like this that are drastic wouldn't be taken?

TONY MASTERS: Well, the first comment I have related to that is system modernization. If you look at the information systems that are used by county and state staff, most of the technology was developed back in the 1980s that's being used. So we have very archaic systems that don't speak to each other either. So there's no cross-referencing across many of these programs too. So to be able to identify where fraud exists, when most of the work is going to have to be manual, to even identify that through a data mining process is very challenging. And I know there is a push amongst MAX, the Minnesota Association of County Social Services Administrators for modernization, as with other county leadership, that system modernization should be one of our top priorities over the next, I don't-- in the future here--

NINA MOINI: As soon as possible, it sounds like.

TONY MASTERS: Exactly, exactly.

NINA MOINI: Anything else? What else? So the systems are outdated. What about staffing?

TONY MASTERS: So staffing, there's a labor shortage across the state. So staffing is problematic in any of these programs. And they're not the highest paying positions, so identifying and finding staff that are going to be able to do this work is very much a challenge. But I think if you are eliminating those bad actors that are fraudulent billing the system, there may be a point in the future if we eliminate fraud, that people get higher wages. One thing I can say about staffing in some of these higher risk areas when it comes to fraud is I think the state could look at expansion of the electronic visit verification system that's used within a couple of the home and community-based waiver service areas, which I don't have all of the details on that.

But it's basically the staff have to check in when they're working within the system. And that could probably alleviate some of that, where they're not even seeing the client because they have to report what they're doing at that point in time when they start working. But that's just one thought. And there's probably a variety of things that could be done. There's plenty of work that needs to be done. But I think system modernization is probably the primary key to all of this.

NINA MOINI: All right. Tony, thank you so much for coming by Minnesota Now and sharing your perspective. It's very important. Thank you for your time, and take care.

TONY MASTERS: Thank you so much.

NINA MOINI: That was Tony Masters, the Adult and Disability Services Manager for Sherburne County.