Welcome to Oasis for Autism, where I’m going to tell you things about the adult autism services system that will make you question basic mathematics, the fundamental laws of physics, and whether anyone in charge of these programs has actually met a human being with severe autism.

I’m Jim. I’m a single father to Felicia, my 28-year-old daughter who has Level 3 autism. We live in Michigan, where the adult autism service system has been systematically dismantled over the past decade through a series of policy choices that other states somehow managed not to make. This site exists because I got tired of being told things were ‘inevitable’ that turned out to be nothing of the sort. It exists because families like ours need someone to actually explain what happened to the day programs, the funding, and the services we were promised would be there when the bus stopped coming.

But before we dive into policy analysis and state comparisons and all the research that proves Michigan chose to abandon adults like Felicia, let me tell you about an impossible choice I’m facing right now. Because this is what life actually looks like when your state decides your child doesn’t matter enough to be funded properly.

The No-Brainer That Isn’t

We were approved for public housing in Massachusetts. Felicia and I. Affordable rent tied to a fixed percentage of our household income, and with it, our Massachusetts residential status. Which means access to the kind of adult autism services that Michigan families can only dream about while crying into their case manager’s voicemail.

Let me give you a sense of the service disparity we’re talking about. Massachusetts operates 524 compliant day program settings with a zero failure rate on federal HCBS compliance. They have a four-tier rate system that pays up to $433 per day for adults with intensive support needs. They created regional autism support centers. They have providers who opened new facilities in 2025 specifically for autistic adults.

Michigan, by contrast, eliminated prevocational services entirely in October 2024. The state’s direct care wage floor is $14.05 per hour (Massachusetts pays rates equivalent to $54+ per hour for the highest support tier). Our day programs closed and never reopened. The best adult autism services Michigan offers wouldn’t qualify as adequate in Massachusetts. They’d be considered substandard.

So yeah. Massachusetts housing approval. Access to real services. Life-altering support for Felicia. As a parent wanting the best for your child, this should be a no-brainer.

Spoiler alert: It’s not.

The Unmeasurable Costs (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Math)

Here’s what the bureaucratic metrics won’t tell you. Here’s what doesn’t show up on any needs assessment or service plan or housing application.

The apartment is less than half the size of where we live now. And in this apartment exists a bathtub so small that Felicia fitting into it would require significant weight loss, contortionist skills, or an outright abandonment of the laws of physics as currently understood by science. We’re talking Schrödinger’s Bathtub here… it both exists and doesn’t exist as a functional bathing space simultaneously. And if I wanted to take a shower in that space…

Felicia’s world is small. Very, very small. It consists of our home, the familiar routines we’ve built over years, and the two people she trusts completely: me and Grandma Cindy.

My mother lives less than ten minutes away. She’s not just my support system. She’s been the mother Felicia needed after her biological mother left us. When I say Grandma Cindy is Felicia’s entire world besides me, I’m not being hyperbolic. I’m being precise.

And Grandma Cindy’s world is also quite small. After losing her beloved Steve years ago, she helped raise two of her three granddaughters. Felicia is central to her life, her purpose, her daily existence.

So here’s the impossible math:

• Move to Massachusetts = Felicia gets actual services. Felicia loses Grandma Cindy. I lose my only support system. Grandma Cindy loses the granddaughter who’s been her world. All of us cram into an apartment half the size with a bathtub designed for people who apparently don’t have hips or knees.
• Stay in Michigan = Felicia keeps Grandma Cindy. We keep our home. We keep our routines and our space and the ten-minute drive that makes our support system work. Felicia gets essentially no services and sits at home every day because Michigan decided adults with Level 3 autism aren’t worth funding.

Show your work. Explain how this equation is supposed to balance.

The Truth Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

Here’s where we enter territory that’s going to make everyone uncomfortable. But I’m going to say it anyway because the math is the math and truth matters, even when it’s horrifying.

If I were to drive Felicia to Massachusetts, drop her off on a street corner, and return home to Michigan, she would ultimately receive better care for the rest of her life in Massachusetts as an abandoned person than she would receive under the very best circumstances in Michigan with a devoted father advocating for her every single day.

Let me be absolutely clear: I do not endorse this. I do not support this.
I do not condone this. I would never, ever commit such an atrocity.
The very thought makes me sick.

But the math adds up. And the truth cannot be ignored.

Massachusetts operates under an entitlement framework. If you’re eligible for developmental disability services, you get them. There are no waitlists. California does the same thing—their services are entitlements, not capped waivers rationed through artificial scarcity. If you qualify, you’re served.

Michigan caps its Habilitation Supports Waiver at approximately 7,500 beneficiaries. There are waiting lists. Services are limited by budget constraints, not by need. Even if you qualify and get enrolled, the services available are a fraction of what Massachusetts provides as a baseline.

An adult with severe autism in Massachusetts without any family advocacy would be entitled to: day habilitation at rates up to $433 per day, residential supports through a robust system of group homes and supported living, behavioral services with appropriate staffing ratios, medical coordination, transportation to community activities, employment support if feasible, and ongoing case management that actually has services to manage.

An adult with severe autism in Michigan with an exhausted father fighting for every scrap of service gets: maybe some limited in-home support if a provider can be found willing to work for $14.05/hour (spoiler: they can’t), possibly a few hours of respite if the PIHP budget hasn’t run out that quarter, access to day programs that no longer exist, and a whole lot of well-meaning case managers apologizing that there’s nothing available.

The abandoned person in Massachusetts would have access to better services than the advocated-for person in Michigan. That’s not my opinion. That’s documented policy reality. Massachusetts structured its system to serve people. Michigan structured its system to ration scarcity.

So when I say the math adds up, I mean it literally. And it’s obscene.

Welcome to Doublethink: The Landscape Where Good Parents
Make Bad Choices

George Orwell gave us the concept of doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true. In his vision, it was a tool of totalitarian control.

In Michigan’s disability services system, it’s just Tuesday.

Moving to Massachusetts is the best thing I could do for Felicia’s services. Moving to Massachusetts would destroy everything stable and familiar in Felicia’s life.

Staying in Michigan preserves our family, our support system, and our home. Staying in Michigan guarantees Felicia will have essentially no adult services for the rest of her life.

I am a good parent if I prioritize her service needs. I am a good parent if I prioritize her emotional stability and family connections.

Both are true. Both are necessary. Both are impossible.

This is what happens when states systematically underfund disability services while other states choose differently. This is what happens when policy decisions made in state capitals create impossible choices for families in living rooms across Michigan.

Massachusetts didn’t have some magical advantage Michigan lacked. They had the same federal compliance deadlines. They faced the same pandemic disruptions. They dealt with the same workforce pressures. The difference is that Massachusetts made policy choices that preserved services. Michigan made policy choices that eliminated them.

And now I get to choose between my daughter’s services and my daughter’s family. Between professional support and personal connection. Between what policy says she needs and what I know she needs.

The medicine might be worse than the disease. Or the disease might be worse than the medicine.

2+2 doesn’t equal 4 when you’re trying to add up impossible choices.

What This Site Is Actually For

I’m telling you this story first because it’s the reality underneath all the policy analysis I’m going to share here. Every blog post about rate disparities and state comparisons and HCBS compliance pathways connects back to this: families making impossible choices because Michigan decided to systematically dismantle adult autism services while nine other top-performing states made different decisions.

This site exists to document what actually happened. To show you the comparative data from states that maintained services. To give you the specific policy choices, the budget decisions, the regulatory interpretations that created this crisis.

I’m not here to sell you inspiration porn about autism being a gift. I’m not here to promise everything will be okay if you just advocate hard enough. I’m here to give you the truth, backed by research, with enough specificity that you can take it into legislative testimony and budget hearings and case management meetings.

Because here’s what I learned after spending months diving into policy documents and state waiver applications and CMS guidance and rate schedules: None of this was inevitable.

The workforce collapsed because Michigan kept direct care wages at $14.05/hour while Colorado mandated $17-18/hour and California built rate models around $16/hour minimums.

The day programs closed because Michigan interpreted HCBS compliance as requiring elimination, while Massachusetts interpreted it as requiring adaptation and achieved 524 compliant settings.

Prevocational services disappeared because Michigan eliminated them entirely in October 2024 while nine of ten comparison states retained them, often with time-limited frameworks and exemptions.

At every decision point, different choices were possible. Other states made them. Michigan didn’t.

So this site is about giving you the ammunition to demand different choices going forward. To show legislators and administrators and case managers that ‘there’s no funding’ is a choice, not a constraint. That ‘federal law required it’ is provably false. That Michigan could restore what was lost if enough families make it politically impossible not to.

The Impossible Choice I Haven’t Made Yet

I haven’t decided yet about Massachusetts. I keep running the math, and it keeps not adding up to anything that feels right.

What I do know is that I shouldn’t have to make this choice. No parent should have to choose between their child’s services and their child’s family. Between professional support and grandmother’s hugs. Between what policy provides and what love requires.

The fact that this choice exists…that it’s even a question families have to wrestle with…is an indictment of Michigan’s policy choices over the past decade.

So welcome to Oasis for Autism. Pull up a chair. We’re going to talk about how we got here, what other states did differently, and what it would actually take to restore services in Michigan.

We’re going to document the policy choices that created impossible choices for families. We’re going to show our work. We’re going to make the case that none of this was inevitable.

And maybe, if we’re loud enough and specific enough and persistent enough, we can make Michigan choose differently going forward.

Because Felicia deserves better than watching me do impossible math about whether loving her means leaving everything we know.

And so does your loved one.

That’s what we’re here to fight for. Together.