Comments
Comment Regarding Florida’s Statewide Transition Plan Home and Community Based Settings Rule CMS 2249-F and CMS 2296-F
Floridians living in Home and Community Based Settings (HCBS) like assisted living facilities and group homes currently have few protections from unlawful, arbitrary, and discriminatory eviction. A federal rule (the HCBS rule), effective in March 2023, is intended to ensure that residents of these group homes, ALFs, and other similar settings, have protections from eviction that are comparable to the protections of a typical housing renter. The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) is the Florida agency tasked with ensuring that group homes and ALFs comply with the HCBS rule. Disability Rights Florida identified ways that Florida is not ready to comply with the HCBS rule and, along with four other non-profit and community-based programs that protect the rights of people who are elderly or disabled, submitted comments to AHCA urging them to engage in rulemaking and take other steps to ensure that Floridians with disabilities living in group homes and ALFs have all the protections from unlawful eviction that the HCBS rule requires. These protections are essential to ensure that Floridians with disabilities can live and receive services in the most integrated setting possible and thereby avoid institutionalization.
AHCA and other Florida state agencies have a great deal of work to do to ensure that the state is following the HCBS rule by ensuring that Floridians with disabilities receive services in the most integrated settings possible. Florida is required to comply with the HCBS rule in March of 2023. DRF looks forward to continuing to monitor and assess the state's progress toward compliance and will take action as necessary to ensure enforcement of the HCBS rule.
Read our comments to the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA)