BALTIMORE (WBFF) — Across Baltimore, more than 115 seemingly ordinary homes – from brick apartment buildings to small rowhouses with tidy lawns – quietly serve as the last stop for potentially thousands of elderly and vulnerable residents. Behind many of those doors, seniors are warehoused in unlicensed assisted living facilities with little oversight, few inspections, and often no trained medical staff.
For years, state and local officials have known about this shadow network of unlicensed care homes, where older and disabled Marylanders often end up in exchange for their Social Security or disability checks. Lawyers have called it “trafficking,” benefit exploitation, and outright neglect.
A Spotlight on Maryland investigation found that state and local agencies have repeatedly failed to shut down dozens of known unlicensed facilities, allowing an underground industry to flourish in Baltimore’s neighborhoods. Hundreds of emergency calls, thousands of documents, and interviews with lawyers, families, caregivers, and business owners reveal a grim pattern: people in their final years left to die in squalor while government agencies look away again and again…