A group of 14 homes in the Houston area for people with intellectual disabilities is closing, sending dozens of families scrambling for other options.
The group, called Texana Center, plans to shut down all its facilities due to staffing issues. The announcement comes after the state Legislature voted to increase salaries for workers at these kinds of shelters.
Taylor Goldenstein, Austin bureau reporter for Hearst Newspapers, spoke to the Texas Standard about the broader challenges facing group homes in the state.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: How many people will be affected by Texana closing?
Taylor Goldenstein: So it looks like it will be about 50 residents, but it’s actually more, as well, in the daytime – kind of skills and socialization classes that they host during the day.
And what kind of funding do group homes like this receive from the state?
So this is a Medicaid program that’s funded through state and federal dollars. So the state sets a base rate pay for the employees that work at these facilities.
I understand the state Legislature actually increased the amount of money that caregivers at these facilities can earn per hour. Was that helpful? Or I guess they’re still closing, so apparently not?
Right. Yeah, the state lawmakers did agree to increase the wages. So they moved from $10.60 an hour to $13 an hour in this latest legislative session. But advocates are saying it’s just still not enough. There are fast food restaurants and retailers who are paying upwards of $18, $20, $22 sometimes dollars an hour, and they’re having to compete.
In some cases, there are some private providers and other providers who can pay a little bit over the base rate. That helps, but it’s obviously not making the full difference.
And then, of course, there are benefits. But yeah, there are limits to what they can do, they say, because it does come down to, what are you paying your people?
We’ve been focusing on this one group of group homes in the Houston area, but is this part of a bigger trend – group homes closing across the state?
Yes, that’s what I’m hearing from the advocates – that this has been happening even before this latest increase, that they’ve been having problems with the low reimbursement rates that have been increased gradually, but not quite to the level they say, and there have been over 100 closures in recent years because they say these rates just haven’t kept up with inflation.
So lawmakers raised the pay by, what, about $3 an hour? And advocates say that wasn’t enough. Why did lawmakers say they couldn’t do more?
Yeah, that’s a great question.
When I spoke to the lawmakers who were kind of pushing this effort, they said that, while it might seem like a small increase, even a $3 increase like that can cost the state a lot. Even just that increase costs the state $1 billion.
And then for the federal and state dollars, it’s almost $2 billion. So it adds up.
At the same time, you also looked at kind of the other big option for families of people with intellectual disabilities across the state, which are the state homes – of which there are a dozen or so across the state. And those you found are actually quite a bit more expensive for the state to run. Is that right?
Right. That’s what advocates are saying, because they’re doing the same services, but just on a large scale.
So it’s, you know, they’re doing the laundry, but for a lot more people. They’re making meals, but a lot more people.
So all of that kind of infrastructure is more costly than just, you know, you do it in one group home and you have resources for that small group that don’t have to be duplicated in the dozens.
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I imagine, though, that when something like this happens and group homes shut down, it’s not that state facilities get overrun – because they’ve got a bed count and they limit the amount of people that are able to get in.
So what happens to people when their group homes close? Do they have to look elsewhere? What’s happening to these folks at Texana?
That’s a really good question. So I know a lot of them will be looking for new group homes, but that is easier said than done. Like you said, there are long wait times for homes, just in general even – you know, this aside.
So more than half of the people who are on the wait list, that’s about 126,000 people, have been waiting eight years or longer. And 10% have been waiting between 15 and 17 years. The state-supported living centers, like you said, also have a wait and don’t necessarily have a ton of vacancies themselves.
So that could mean kind of in-between options for folks that aren’t necessarily ideal: moving in with a family member temporarily… You know, some families I’m hearing are even leaving the state.
And you profiled one family in particular for which that’s not an option. And she’s worried about the impact that this will have on her son, because change isn’t easy for anybody, but especially for some of these people with intellectual disabilities.
Right, yeah. In the past, when her son – her son’s name is Sami – when he’s had to move even just within Texan to a different group home, that was hard. And for months she said it was difficult to get him to understand, “this is where you’ll be living.”
