The Feeding Our Future — Personal Care Assistant Connections

Recently, we’ve been making connections between the free-food scandal, overseen by the state Department of Education (MDE), and other government entitlement programs overseen by the state Department of Human Services (DHS).

The problems with one program — involving personal care assistants (PCA) — go back years. PCAs are licensed professionals who provide assistance with care at home for persons who need help with day-to-day activities.

We previously chronicled the business activities of Abdikerm Eidleh — serial entrepreneur, contractor for Feeding Our Future, and, perhaps, an international fugitive.

DHS databases show Eidleh’s Charm Home Care PCA business as being closed as of Dec. 31, 2021. But not before he extracted $140,000 in taxpayer money for the effort.

DHS lists as another recently closed PCA company, an entity called Safari Center. The license holder for this business is listed as Cosmopolitan Business Solutions LLC, the parent company of Safari Restaurant of Minneapolis. Safari Restaurant is closely associated with both the Feeding Our Future scandal and to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

In fact, the address for Safari Center is the same address as the restaurant in Minneapolis. Like Charm Home, the DHS database shows Safari Center as closed as of Dec. 31, 2021, a month before the FBI raids.

Another free-food nonprofit closed by the state Department of Education was Youth Academy.

Two of the Minneapolis addresses that figure prominently in the Youth Academy saga — 3355 Hiawatha and 4020 Minnehaha — also happen to be strongholds of the PCA trade.

All of the above are PCA companies except for Open Arms. Six of the seven PCA companies are vendors to DHS. We see the usual pattern with explosive growth in the most recent two years.