Tag: New Directions Center

Thinking of giving? Think carefully

(Reading time: 9 minutes)

At a time when an increasingly frayed “safety net” is in danger of collapsing altogether, starved of funds and overseen by a vastly hollowed out federal bureaucracy, it’s only to be expected that social service agencies will step up their fund-raising efforts. At our household, for example, we get a plea for donations to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank at least once a month, to which we respond as we’re able. But the line of those in need cuts across all of life’s essentials, and seems to get only longer, and you have to wonder how it will all end.

One thing about which we should not have to wonder, but which is rarely addressed publicly, is the level of institutional need. Yes, people are hungry, and in need of shelter, and wanting for adequate medical care or school supplies or decent clothing. But are the agencies working to help such people equally needy? How well do they apply the funds they raise, and how accountable and transparent are they with their donors? Do some have more than they need to help their constituents? Or have some squandered the donations they’ve received, as was so blatantly true of the now defunct local United Way a couple of years ago? How many local affiliates of national organizations coast on the latter’s reputations, rather than on their actual accomplishments?

These are tough questions to pose, because they threaten to tarnish institutions seen as local champions of the downtrodden. But the reality is that the pot of community goodwill and financial support is finite, and likely to shrink even as the need keeps growing. Giving money to Agency A means there’s less money to give to Agency B. Yet the few local institutionalized sources of such help—such as Community Development Block Grants, the Community Action Partnership of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro (CAPSAW) or the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge—pay scant attention to the financial statements of their grant applicants, showing more concern for how many people their contribution might benefit.  Private contributors, meanwhile, are even less likely to do their homework when responding to the latest tug at their heart strings.

SAW Habitat for Humanity

One prominent example of muddled financial accountability is provided by the SAW Habitat for Humanity, which a couple of years ago was roiled by scandal involving its then-executive director, Lance Barton. Initial accusations of sexual assault by Barton were followed by reporting in the Augusta Free Press of years of Barton’s alleged verbal abuse of staff, temper outbursts, uncomfortable conversations about sex, substance abuse, drunken behavior at work and supposed financial irregularities. By late spring of 2024, Barton was out of a job, Habitat’s board of directors had virtually a complete makeover, and an interim director was brought on to manage the transition until a permanent replacement could be recruited.

That replacement was Brad Bryant, a widely respected local builder, teacher and former Habitat board member who was hired almost ten months ago. To be fair, Bryant inherited a mess—but it’s also fair to question his lack of public progress thus far in setting Habitat’s financial house in order. Although Bryant says the organization recently completed its first financial audit on his watch, its findings have not yet been publicized. Meanwhile, the most recent Form 990 tax return posted on Habitat’s website—the IRS form all non-profit organizations are required to submit to maintain their non-profit status, a form that potential contributors can consult before giving their money—is for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022. That was almost four years ago.

More recent Form 990s have been filed with the IRS, but Bryant had not seen them before this week. One was for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023. A second, following an apparent decision by the interim executive director to change Habitat’s fiscal year to a calendar year, was filed for the year ending Dec. 31, 2023. Depending on how diligently someone in the public searches for financial accountability, then, there’s been a lack of reporting for more than two years, and possibly quite a bit longer.

Some of that gap may get filled when the recent audit results are published, but even then, the report will be notably deficient in at least one material aspect. Among the financial assets in Habitat’s possession are nearly 300 pieces of poster art that were purchased by the disgraced Barton on a junket to Poland, ostensibly as an investment that could be sold to American collectors at a hefty mark-up. The art was purchased with Habitat funds, on a trip underwritten by Habitat that was rationalized as an unconventional but potentially lucrative fund-raiser. The art now sits in a locked room. It has never been shown to the public, and it has yet to be professionally appraised. Whether it’s a significant if unrealized financial asset, or whether it’s just a lot of worthless paper, the product of Barton’s feverish imagination, remains unknown.

In Bryant’s assessment, any fuss over the Polish art is a tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing at a time when he’s struggling with more substantive issues to make Habitat “viable again.”  He may be right. He may also be markedly wrong. The point is that a somewhat bizarre aspect of Habitat’s bookkeeping is a black box that the organization doesn’t want anyone looking into. When I asked Habitat’s new chairman of the board, Charles Edmond, for an explanation of the Polish art fiasco, his terse response was to say that “due to ongoing litigation, our attorney has advised us to not talk about this issue at this time.”  Yet as Bryant conceded, there actually isn’t any litigation, just repeated failed attempts at getting the Commonwealth’s Attorney to look at the possibility.

There’s no question that Habitat was left in tatters by its departed executive director, and that restoring its luster—not to mention its effectiveness at actually building affordable housing—is a monumental task. But that task is not made easier in the face of financial inscrutability. Not when organizational viability is dependent on the public’s willingness to open its wallet.

Valley Mission

A diametrically opposite set of circumstances is provided by Valley Mission, which provides long-term shelter and case management for our area’s homeless population. It is perpetually over-subscribed, with a waiting list that can stretch for months, and even though the Mission ostensibly has a six-month window within which its clients are encouraged and worked with to obtain permanent housing, the reality is that a year or more of residency is not unusual. There just isn’t enough affordable housing to meet the need.

It may seem paradoxical, therefore, that the Covid pandemic was very good to the Mission’s financial fortunes. Money poured in from various sources, so even as expenses climbed, revenue far outstripped what was needed, jumping from a more or less normal $1.3 million in 2019 to $2.5 million in 2020 to $3 million in 2021. And although income declined somewhat thereafter, it remained significantly higher than pre-pandemic revenue.

Give the Mission a thumbs-up for showing restraint in the face of this bounty: although expenses have continued to climb every year, they have not outstripped the Mission’s two main sources of regular income, contributions and grants, and the income generated by its thrift stores in Staunton and Waynesboro. The surplus has instead been banked, some in cash and some in investments, where it has been generating an enviable amount of interest income: $103,909 in 2023, for example, and an additional $121,642 in 2024.

All told, then, the Mission ended 2024 (its 2025 financials have not been filed yet) with just a tad less than $3 million in cash, $1.6 million in investments, and a total of $5.4 million in unrestricted assets. To put that in context, the Mission’s total expenses in 2024 were $2.3 million—which is to say, the organization is now sitting on enough liquid assets to operate for two years without a single additional dollar coming in the door. It is, in one sense, functioning like an investment bank, which may not be what potential donors want their contributions to fund.

A possibly bigger problem is that even as it hoards a lot of cash, the Mission continues seeking and receiving funding from the same sources used by other local social service agencies, many of which are also trying to help people meet their housing needs. That includes Waynesboro Area Relief Ministries (WARM), Valley Supportive Housing, New Directions Center, and Renewing Homes of Greater Augusta, all of which operate on a shoestring. Meanwhile, in recent years the Mission has been receiving approximately $7,940 annually from Staunton’s Community Development Block Grant, was awarded $11,500 from the Community Foundation in 2024 and $161,000 in 2023, and in the year ending June 30, 2025, received $36,622 from CAPSAW. That’s all money that would have had a far more meaningful impact elsewhere.

There’s another aspect of the Mission’s growing wealth that is problematic. Not only is the Mission not meeting the full demand for the services it already provides, but there are numerous adjacent needs of the homeless population that remain completely unaddressed.  Among the most prominent, for example, is the lack of a day center in the SAW region to provide shelter and services to people who otherwise are left wandering the streets in search of winter warmth, summer shade and refuge from rain and other extreme weather in all seasons.  There are several reasons why this state of affairs exists, but among the most prominent is a lack of adequate funding.

Providing a day center is not the Mission’s responsibility. On the other hand, it’s not unreasonable to think that perhaps the Mission could expand its efforts to answer an unmet need that is entirely aligned with its core mission.  Perhaps it will.

The Mission’s executive director, Susan Richardson, left open that possibility by asserting that the Mission’s board and leadership “makes financial and strategic decisions based on what we believe is best for Valley Mission and the residents we serve.” So . . . not saying no either to expanding the Mission’s facilities to provide more shelter space, or to filling in other holes in the safety net provided to the same generalized population. But also not saying no to bellying up to the financial water hole frequented by all those other critters in the social services ecosystem, which after all is how the system works.

It’s a jungle out there.

Winter is coming

(Reading time: 4 minutes)

In another sign that the universe has a dark sense of humor, the Valley Homeless Connection announced last week the results of its annual Point in Time (PIT) survey of the local homeless population. That was on Tuesday. Three days later, the Trumpian chainsaw approach to government slashed funding to an additional half-a-dozen federal agencies, including the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. The council, Trump said, was “unnecessary.”

As government agency budgets go, this won’t save more than pocket change: $3.6 million a year. But as far as meeting a social need, the cut eliminates the only federal agency charged with implementing “the federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness.” And yes, there actually is such a plan, adopted Dec. 19, 2022, one that sought to reduce homelessness by 25% by this year. That it has failed to do so is as much a statement about the size of the problem as it is about the government’s effectiveness in addressing systemic issues without adequate funding or political buy-in.

The local PIT count underscores the point. The annual snapshot of how many people are sleeping in homeless shelters and on the streets, in one capacity or another—tents, cars, cardboard boxes—found little change from a year ago, when the 2024 PIT found 157 homeless people in the SAW region of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro. This year’s survey, conducted on one of the coldest nights in many years—the temperature in Waynesboro dropped from a high of 22 to just 4 degrees—counted 146 homeless adults in the SAW region (another 10 were counted in Lexington and Rockbridge County). Nine of the adults also had custody of 16 children younger than 18, adding to the total.

The good news is that a greater percentage of the PIT-counted people this year were in emergency shelters, with 82 staying at the Valley Mission, 40 in the overnight shelter operated by WARM, and five staying at the New Directions Center, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. All the children were sheltered, as well, and two people in the SAW region were put up in motel rooms paid by social agencies. That left just 17 people in the SAW region toughing it out in the cold, compared with last year’s 30 or more. Then again, as observed by Lydia Campbell of the Valley Homeless Connection, the severe weather may have forced any number of homeless people into other alternatives, such as couch-surfing with family or friends. And as always, there’s the question of how many unsheltered people were simply missed in the count, with the extreme cold forcing people to burrow in more tightly wherever they were.

Among the PIT findings that Campbell highlighted was an increase from 51 in 2024 to 71 in 2025 of people who reported they were homeless for the first time. “That is a wild thing,” Campbell said, reflected in such vignettes as the woman who sleeps in a car parked outside her husband’s Verona workplace while he works inside. Indeed, the PIT found “lots” of people sleeping in their cars in the Sheetz and Walmart parking lots, as well as at Cracker Barrel, Martin’s and Lowe’s. Meanwhile, as the number of newly homeless people suggests, the pipeline is filling up faster than it can empty out: the national plan to end homelessness reports that on average, 908,530 people became homeless each year between 2017 and 2020, while 900,895 exited homelessness each of those years.  That’s a remarkable turnaround from the period of 2010-2017, when national homelessness declined 14%.

Meanwhile, meeting the national plan’s goal of a 25% reduction in homelessness would require that this year’s PIT count not exceed 437,000, down from the 582,462 counted in the 2022 PIT census. The trend, alas, has been precisely in the opposite direction, topping out at 770,000 in 2024—and if the local numbers are any indication, the national 2025 PIT results are unlikely to have improved.  But because it takes many months to compile all the national data, just how much worse things have become nationally won’t be known until late this year.

Locally, the outlook is grim. The advent of spring inevitably pushes away concerns about people freezing to death, and the leafing out of the landscape tends to obscure homeless encampments: out of sight, out of mind.  The slash-and-burn practices that are hollowing out—if not completely eliminating—social service budgets and agencies are still to be fully felt locally, but Campbell says Housing and Urban Development funding for permanent housing is already drying up, and an array of services to help people cope with joblessness, substance abuse and poor health is evaporating. Even those who don’t lose sight of the problem can feel hamstrung and helpless to respond in any meaningful way.

Yet as often intoned in Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming.” Even now, on the verge of the spring equinox. What then?