Group Home Residents Need Place to Live, New NC Secretary Promises Help

North Carolina's new Secretary of Health and Human Services says she's committed to helping residents of group homes find a place to live at the end of the month. About 14 hundred people with mental illnesses or developmental disabilities are no longer eligible for Medicaid reimbursements for personal care services.

The outgoing Governor, Bev Perdue, allocated one million dollars from a rental assistance fund to keep remaining group home residents in place until the end of January. But everyone's aware that money will run out, says Secretary Aldona Vos.

Aldona Vos: "Everyone- legislator, government, governor, stakeholders, everyone is interested in making sure that everybody has a place to live and isn't thrown out on the street. So everyone's on the same page, it's a matter of resolving it. And the bigger picture resolution is that it has to come from the legislature, they're working on it, they're really working on it."

Vos says money will have to come from the legislature to solve the problem. Some Alzheimer's patients in special care units could face housing issues as well, without a legislative fix.