A group of nonprofits, government agencies and faith-based groups dedicated to helping the homeless has been accused of wrongdoing by one of its members.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sent a letter to the Stanislaus Housing & Support Services Collaborative this month detailing the anonymous complaints.
The collaborative was formed about 15 years ago and includes the major nonprofits in Stanislaus County. It has received $37 million to $40 million in funding.
The allegations are against the collaborative's five-member executive committee and include providing false information to HUD, conflicts of interest and mismanagement. Collaborative members met Thursday to discuss the HUD letter.
The anonymous complaints come as HUD officials are investigating the city of Modesto's administration of $25 million in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding. The NSP is designed to eliminate blight in foreclosure-stricken communities.
One of the collaborative's members — the Stanislaus Community Assistance Project — also has come under scrutiny for how it spent millions of dollars in federal funds it received from the city.
SCAP has put employees and family members of employees in some of the renovated housing. Joe Gibbs, SCAP's grant writer and development director, served on the collaborative's executive committee until he resigned about a month ago.
HUD said a collaborative member sent an e-mail July 10 outlining his or her concerns. The person said he or she has been a collaborative member for more than five years and requested that his or her name be kept confidential.
"I would be blacklisted for what I am about to say, and it may cost me my job," the person wrote. The e-mail's allegations include that:
• Three members of the executive committee work for agencies that receive HUD Supportive Housing Program grants, "yet provide supposed oversight and review of their own projects with no input from the" collaborative.
• Executive committee members Gibbs, Michele Gonzales and Glenn Hutsell "rigged" the application- review process to get funding for their "pet projects" year after year.
• The executive committee failed to review whether HUD grant recipients were complying with a grant's requirements. If they had done so, they would have spotted the problems at Community Housing and Shelter Services, a Modesto nonprofit that nearly closed because of mismanagement.
• The Homeless Management Information System, a software program designed to record and store information about the homeless and their needs, still is not running after four years.
• Some executive committee members provided fraudulent information on a 2010 HUD grant application.
"We have an obligation to respond to the collaborative and to HUD," said Gonzales, who works for the Housing Authority of the County of Stanislaus. "Unfortunately, that's all we can say at this point."
Aaron Farnon, the executive committee president and Stanislaus County's community development manager, declined to comment after Thursday's meeting. Hutsell did not return a phone message Thursday evening.
The collaborative's members include Haven Women's Center, The Salvation Army and Inter-Faith Ministries. Collaborative members did not talk Thursday about the allegations, but about the process in which they will respond to HUD.
The collaborative formed a committee, made up of members whose agencies are not named in the e-mail or receive funding from those named in the e-mail, to meet next week to decide, among other things, how to investigate the allegations and respond to HUD.
Executive committee members will not be included on that committee.
"It's definitely not appropriate for the executive committee to review itself," Farnon said during the meeting.
Gonzales said the allegations will hurt the collaborative's efforts to get funding from HUD this year. The collaborative also is known as the Stanislaus County Continuum of Care.
The collaborative received HUD's letter Monday. HUD requested that the collaborative respond within 15 days on how it plans to conduct its review, a timeline to complete the review and the date for its final response.
Farnon said the collaborative can and will ask HUD for 15 more days to make its initial response.
Bee staff writer Kevin Valine can be reached at kvaline@modbee.com or (209) 578-2316.
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