TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the first lady have branded Hope Florida as an innovative program to help people off government assistance.

But after nearly four years, the goals and effectiveness of the initiative remain a mystery. State officials have released no relevant data about its performance or how much it costs. Lawmakers and others familiar with the program say it duplicates existing services.

This week, state officials said a major function of Hope Florida is “graduating” people from Medicaid, an elusive goal that could cause thousands of Floridians to lose their health insurance.

As DeSantis wants lawmakers to create an Office of Hope Florida under the governor in state law, Hope Florida’s charity arm is enveloped in a growing scandal over $10 million in state settlement money that was funneled through its coffers to two dark-money groups.

Now, the program’s future — and the DeSantises’ legacy — is in doubt.

“Why is Hope Florida necessary?” House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican, said last week. “We have agencies that are supposed to do that work. Are they not doing their job properly? Do we have to take a look at that?”

30,000 off welfare?

Casey DeSantis launched Hope Florida as her signature initiative, touting the program as her answer to state welfare programs.

The program operates a call line for Floridians in need. It has turned at least 100 state workers into “hope navigators” who are supposed to help Floridians find local nongovernmental resources.

Callers to the hot line can be entered into an online CarePortal. Churches and nonprofits have access to the portal and can see what the person is seeking and choose whether to help them.

“We use this model to say, ‘Hey, y’all need some help, and the help is not government, the help is exterior,’” Casey DeSantis said at a panel in Washington last month. “Now we help them — prevent them — from getting on government assistance and help them live up to their God-given potential.”

The governor said the program has been immensely successful. He said he and Casey have briefed President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk about it, and other states have made “pilgrimages” to Florida to try to replicate it.

“Since this has been implemented, we’ve gotten 30,000 people off welfare and saved the state of Florida $100 million,” Ron DeSantis said Monday. “And so that’s a great success story.”

His administration has been citing some variation of the 30,000 figure for at least 10 months. On Hope Florida’s website, it says the number includes Floridians “with reduced reliance or no longer relying on public assistance.”

How the state arrived at those numbers is unclear. The administration has yet to say who those people are, where they live or what role hope navigators played in getting them off that assistance.

Department of Children and Families Secretary Taylor Hatch said during a House panel Tuesday that most of the savings from the program were due to families no longer receiving food assistance. The monthly groceries Florida’s 3 million recipients buy through the program are entirely funded by the federal government.

Cindy Huddleston, an expert on food and cash assistance with the left-leaning Florida Policy Institute, said these benefits already come with work requirements as they are part of programs that, like Hope Florida, seek to “put families on the path to self-sufficiency.”

Without more information from the department, it’s hard to know if the reduction in benefits was attributable to Hope Florida or the traditional program, Huddleston said. Also, people tend to get off benefits and then get back on because “their new jobs are insufficient to make ends meet.”

When asked by a lawmaker last week when the state will release more detailed data on who Hope Florida is helping and how, DeSantis administration officials didn’t say.

Hope Florida’s foundation also pays nonprofits it works with, but it’s unclear how compensation decisions are made. Minutes of an October board meeting noted they were handing out money on an “ad hoc basis.” Churches have been getting increments of between $10,000 and $40,000, news releases show.

Last week, the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times reported that the foundation took in $10 million through a state settlement with Centene, Florida’s largest Medicaid contractor. It sent the money to two dark-money groups, which then sent millions to a political committee fighting last year’s recreational marijuana ballot initiative, which narrowly lost.

DeSantis has previously said the settlement with Centene, including the money sent to the Hope Florida Foundation, was “100% appropriate.”

‘Graduating’ from Medicaid?

Despite questions about Hope Florida’s track record, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration has embedded the program

in every contract with the state’s Medicaid providers, worth a collective $28 billion.

Medicaid is a state-federal program that provides health care services to 4.2 million needy Floridians — mainly children, the disabled, pregnant women, parents and caretakers. Because of Florida’s strict requirements, single, working, low-income adults don’t qualify.

For the next five years, Medicaid providers will get preferential treatment for “graduating” Floridians off of the program. Although the contracts are in effect, the state has not defined what graduating means.

Hope navigators are supposed to work with the Medicaid contractors to drastically improve Floridians’ financial circumstances. Experts question whether those improvements are possible.

For a parent to qualify for Medicaid in a family of three, they can’t earn more than $598 a month. That is an annual salary of $7,176.

“They’re in very difficult circumstances,” said Katy DeBriere, a Medicaid attorney with the Florida Health Justice Project, which advocates for access to health care through the courts.

If they make just over that amount, they would lose Medicaid entirely since Florida is one of 10 states that have not expanded the federal program.

That would likely mean they’d fall into a coverage gap and lose health insurance altogether. To qualify for Affordable Care Act subsidies, recipients would have to nearly quadruple their annual income. Those subsidies don’t apply until that family reaches the federal poverty line of $26,650.

“You’d have to fundamentally shift the economy” to graduate a meaningful number of people from Medicaid without them losing their health insurance, DeBriere said.

Questions about the program

Acacia Davidson, 50, said she called Hope Florida earlier this month when her federal aid for shelter from Hurricane Milton expired, leaving her, her disabled husband and adult daughter homeless. Her hope navigator referred her to a church and to a local shelter, records Davidson provided show. Neither could provide her family a place to stay, Davidson said.

The navigator also asked if she had called the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “I said, ‘Have you guys?’” Davidson said. She said the navigators didn’t seem to have any connections within the organizations they referred her to. Davidson said what she really wanted was for her navigator to help her get into an apartment instead of referring her to “dead-end resources.” Since Thursday, she’s either been living out of her car or a motel in Orlando, she said.

Davidson said her experience calling Hope Florida was no different than other services she’s tried, including 211, the free call line supported by United Way that connects Floridians to various programs and aid.

Last year, 211 took in nearly a million calls, according to its website. Since Hope Florida launched four years ago, 115,000 people have been referred to it, according to its website.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat whose office emphasizes constituent services, said she doesn’t refer callers to Hope Florida.

“I just don’t trust that there’s going to be a result,” Eskamani said. She said the point of Hope Florida is to “push people off social services. And some people just aren’t ready for that. They’re in a crisis.”

She called the program “an example of public money being used to boost someone’s political position.”

Meaningfully improving someone’s life to the point where they’re economically self-sufficient is not easy, said state Rep. Debra Tendrich, a Democrat from Lake Worth who runs her own Palm Beach County nonprofit.

“It’s not just, somebody gets a job and they’re financially free,” Tendrich said. “You have to change people’s habits."

That could be talking to them about spending patterns, changing their living situation, navigating veterans benefits or getting them health care. Her nonprofit typically spends between two and 10 hours on someone’s case, she said.

“I don’t know how 30,000 people got off of services,” she said.

Tendrich said she saw Hope Florida as a “referral service” similar to 211 and other nonprofits. She said it’s the churches and the nonprofits that participate in the program that are the ones actually helping people.

“They’re taking all the credit,” Tendrich said of Hope Florida. “They say they have partners with this, but their partners are doing most of the work.”

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