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The 2025 Disability Housing Scandal Shows We Broke That Promise.
Minnesota likes to see itself as a national leader in disability rights — the state that closed abusive institutions, embraced the Olmstead mandate, and pioneered community-based care long before other places even attempted it. We point proudly to the Jensen Settlement of 2011 as proof that we learned from our mistakes and charted a better path forward. But the 2025 Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) fraud crisis has exposed a painful truth: Even the best-written reforms can fail when the systems behind them remain fragile.
This scandal — IS NOT the largest disability-service fraud Minnesota has ever seen — but isn’t just about missing money, bad actors, or administrative chaos. It’s about how easily vulnerable people can be harmed when a system assumes it has finished the work of justice, instead of accepting that justice requires constant tending. Minnesota did not “fix” the problem when METO closed. It simply created a new environment — and then failed to protect it. Does that mean the state doesn't really care; that in the state of Minnesota, disabled citizens don't matter? It certainly appears so to one twenty-two year victim of Minnesota's ongoing government fraud problem.
Our State Enforced That Oversight Is Optional
The Jensen Settlement demanded sweeping changes after the horrors uncovered at METO: young adults in shackles, people locked in seclusion rooms for days, and families begging the state to intervene. In its aftermath, Minnesota promised a new era of person-centered care — one rooted in dignity, autonomy, and community life. And not for a moment, did we believed the promise. We needed the evidence of it first.
Then, in 2025, investigators revealed fraudulent billing schemes, fabricated clients, and Medicaid funds stolen by the millions, one thing became clear: Minnesota replaced institutional physical abuse with structural physical abuse, continued financial exploitation and intentional systemic neglect. The harm looks slightly different since Jensen V. Minnesota Department of Human Services — no handcuffs, no seclusion cells at least not initially, until a neglected and abused disabled person is thrust into society and swept up by police who are just as corrupt as human services records demonstrate DHS to be—but the impact is just as devastating:
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People with disabilities losing their housing.
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Healthcare and Therapeutic environments disappearing overnight.
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Providers collapsing in the wake of payment freezes.
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Vulnerable Minnesotans left without the support they rely on to survive.
Is this what “community-based care” was supposed to look like?
We feigned compliance, intentionally did not measure care, continued to hide the face of the victims as well as the perpetrators, we suppressed victims narratives so that they could not name the perpetrators other—celebrated the amount of time that passed Since Jensen was filed and nothing more, because little had changed. When the federal court ended oversight of the Jensen Settlement in 2020, DHS declared victory. Legally speaking, they had wooed the court into creating a judgement that they had complied. The checkboxes were ticked—but accuracy wasn't validated. The rules had been rewritten—but the DHS workforce culture and the culture of DHS partner agencies was the same.But a judicial ruling of compliance isn’t justice, isn’t safety, isn’t dignity—It's just something that someone said. Minnesota asked, “ Do we look like we following the rule?” When we should have asked: “Are our citizens safe?” The answer in 2025 is a resounding no.
The Scandal Exposes a Hard Truth: People With Disabilities Cannot Be Protected by Paper Alone, Especially When We Fail To Investigated The Validity of What's Been Written
A law cannot stop fraud. A policy cannot monitor itself. An Olmstead Plan cannot enforce its own values. Real protection requires:
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constant oversight
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consistent accountability
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cultural transformation
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ethical leadership
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transparent systems
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respect for the people receiving public waivered healthcare insurance, not just the agencies collecting the monies and contracted to be delivering them
Minnesota cannot continue to rely on crisis to force reform. We cannot wait for another METO.
We cannot wait for another massive fraud scandal. We cannot wait for the next group of victims to come forward.
This Is Our Moment to Decide Who We Want to Be
Minnesota’s disability rights movement was built by families who refused to accept abuse as inevitable. They demanded change, and they won. Now it’s our turn. We must demand:
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A audit of Department of Human Services Waiver Programs
Conduct Investigations With Recipients Who Have Made Complaints
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Hold Appointing Governors and Commission Staff Accountable for DHS Culture, Conduct and Outcomes
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Move Abuse Complaints To Private, Community-led oversight because waiver fraud is so often first identified by vulnerable persons who do not receive contracted medical services or were mistreated by the companies DHS contracts to manager and deliver waivered healthcare
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Transparency in Abuse Complaints, Medicaid billing and provider contracts
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Whistleblower protections for "recipients participating in government programs"
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A permanent watchdog overseeing Olmstead implementation
Most importantly, we must commit to something Minnesota has never done consistently: Prioritizing respect to people with disabilities — every step of the way. There can be no more reforms about disabled Minnesotans without their leadership and oversight on disability related matters.
Minnesota Promised “Never Again.” Now We Must Prove It.
If we fail to act now — boldly, transparently, and collaboratively — the lesson of 2025 will not be that fraud occurred. It will be that Minnesota knew better and still chose not to do better, because knowing, not doing better and ensuring the public remains ignorant of the truth is the true meaning of "Minnesota Nice." The Jensen Settlement taught us that Minnesota IS IN FACT, a state that looks away from abuse committed by its own employees, facilities, contracted programs and vendors against all its citizens disabled and tax-payer alike. The 2025 fraud crisis is teaching us what happens when a state looks away from accountability. “Never again” cannot be a slogan we dust off when convenient. It must become a practice.
The people of Minnesota — especially our disabled citizens — deserve a system rooted not just in the illusion of legal compliance, but in unwavering dignity, ethics, and human decency. Over 117, fraudulent housing programs were shut down in 2025, five years after we publicly claimed that DHS had become complaint with the mandates of Jensen V. Minnesota Department of Human Services, knowing that there was an ongoing class action lawsuit filed in 2015, stating that DHS was not compliant and $1 billion dollars in HBCB waivered funding was "missing" long enough to be converted to general funding and then disappear.
Disability rights are not a charity. They are a responsibility by a state collecting taxpayer funding for waivered healthcare insurance for the disabled citizens of that state. One we must honor every single day.
2025 Fraud Scandals Uncovered Through Whistleblower Portal
The 2025 fraud scandals were not uncovered through participants' reports. The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) continues to disallow firsthand abuse reports from victims and forbids them from accessing what DHS workers at the MAARC hotline have authored on their behalf when reporting fraudulent abuses in daily waivered healthcare services. These fraud cases were instead uncovered via a Republican House of Representatives whistleblower portal, established in line with the initiation of DOGE (Department of Government Oversight and Ethics).
To date, there remains no standardized government portal within DHS for reporting firsthand fraudulent abuse in waivered services.
By Amani Chiari, victim of ongoing DHS waivered fraud since 2003.
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