As of late, there’s been a headline topic in the news about a Mental Health organization in Greensboro abusing the system as a provider. The organization would rent out groups of apartments and motel rooms, send recruiters to find homeless persons and offer them housing… Sounds amazing, right? Not at all…
The housing was dependent on three things, an active Medicaid number, substance use and 100% attendance in their classes five days per week. You had to test positive for “hard” drugs to qualify. It doesn’t sound as good anymore does it? It get’s worse…
The How
Once you meet the requirements to obtain housing, services start the next day. All is well in the universe unless you miss class, then you are served papers for a $350 rent payment. If you can’t make the payment, you are thrown out immediately or you can recommit to 100% class attendance, no exceptions.
If you have a clean drug test, you have to “go fix it” to retain housing. If your Medicaid number becomes inactive, you are thrown out immediately…. If the light has not gone off yet, this is forced incarceration. In the onset, if you had to choose between living back on the street or housing with “3-hots-and-a-cot” which would you choose?
The Why
In a substance abuse program, participants are supposed to be offered non-mandated group sessions on a weekly basis. Receiving mental health services needs to be a person’s choice.
Included in the three-hour daily sessions is curriculum group counseling, individual counseling and case management. If less than all of these services were rendered, the clients were done a disservice. Why would an organization exploit people in our community like this? Here’s why: these daily services are billed at $160 per day, per participant. $160 x 35 participants x 5 days = $28,000 weekly.
Mental Health is real! Any persons running an organization like this has some major moral and mental health issues. If you are going to help the homeless and/or individuals with substance issues, do not exploit them. It’s already hard enough to bring true awareness to mental health and when someone decides to get help, it’s abused.
The goal should be to educate and empower people to be the best they can be, as they learn the importance of mental health.
