As with many of the Downtown Streets Team staff functions, attendees say the liquor flowed freely during the 2014 holiday party at the non-profit group’s San Jose headquarters on The Alameda.
A young female staffer hired a month prior recalls mingling with colleagues by the receptionist’s desk when Eileen Richardson, the homeless services provider’s CEO, walked up to join her. “Out of nowhere,” the employee recalls, the non-profit executive asked, “So, you’re a lesbian?”
“We were standing at the front desk chatting, tipsy on wine, and talking about how I liked the job so far,” the newcomer, who requested anonymity to protect future job prospects, later wrote about the encounter. The woman says she laughed at the prying question but answered affirmatively. Richardson then inquired about her relationship status and physical preferences before waxing poetic about feminine beauty, the ex-employee says.
“OK, so what’s your type?” she says she asked Richardson, who “suddenly got serious and sultry-eyed, leaned in and said, ‘Well, you are.’”
The night grew “increasingly strange” as guests helped themselves to boxed wine and spiked punch, did keg stands—that is, hand-standing on a keg to guzzle as much beer as possible—and took swigs of hard liquor, according to the woman, who says she drank so much that she threw up in the office toilet. All the while, she says, an “incredibly drunk” Richardson followed her around and “had her arm around me and kept telling my friends to go ahead and leave.” The staffer says her employer began “brushing my hair back from my face, snuggling her head into my neck” as onlookers shot worried looks at the pair.
Those same concerned co-workers eventually laid her down on the floor in the office of Richardson’s son, Director of Program Operations Chris Richardson, where the employee remembers waking up at one point to see her boss beside her “staring lovingly at me.”
One of the colleagues who witnessed the evening’s uncomfortably intimate conclusion “checked in with me often in the next few weeks” over Richardson’s “obvious coming on to me,” the employee says. Others found humor in the escapade.
“Several other staff joked about Eileen having a crush on me, and there was a rumor that she’d kissed me,” the employee says. “If she did that night, I don’t recall.”
A couple months later, the employee says she attended a Super Bowl party at Chris Richardson’s home, at which Eileen Richardson invited her to have a beer and view a photo album at her adjacent residence, where she followed her and “kissed me in the doorway of the bathroom.”
‘A Frat House’
As Silicon Valley’s homeless population ballooned amid an unprecedented affordability crisis over the past decade, Downtown Streets Team (DST) emerged as one of the most prominent local organizations trying to lift people out of poverty.
By 2012 it had garnered commendations from then-San Jose Councilman Sam Liccardo, counted Palo Alto’s top cop as a board member and received nearly $400,000, about 40 percent of its budget, from direct government support. In 2013, the non-profit expanded into the North Bay, landing contracts with the cities of San Rafael and Novato; in 2016, it launched a team in San Francisco and a year later in Santa Cruz.
Behind the do-good mission of employing the unhoused, however, a toxic workplace culture festered for years, according to a dozen former staffers.
In letters prepared by attorneys and echoed in reviews on job-rating platform Glassdoor.com, ex-employees accuse both Eileen, 58, and her son Chris, 33, of sexual harassment, making lewd comments, paying women less than men for similar work and promoting a culture of heavy drinking. Employees have described the workplace as “toxic,” “a frat house,” “full of nepotism and favoritism,” “a joke” and “managed as a high school popularity contest.” Multiple people compared working at Streets Team to being in an abusive relationship.
Eileen Richardson (left) with one of her managers at DST's 2015 holiday party. (Photo via Facebook)
One of the most recent Glassdoor reviews, dated Oct. 29, reads: “Leaders (exec staff and directors) model inappropriate behavior for a non-profit of this caliber: yelling and using profanities at meetings, talking poorly about nonprofits doing similarly important work, engaging in excessive drinking with staff.”
Yet sources say that reporting misconduct proved difficult because of close friendships between the Richardsons, their strategically appointed board of directors and other managers, including Chief Operating Officer Elfedra Strydom, who until earlier this year fielded all personnel concerns.
In all, San Jose Inside interviewed more than a dozen former employees who allege harassment, sexual assault and discrimination at DST. Two of those ex-staffers are coming forward publicly with their claims for the first time, comparing the problems at DST with those that prompted the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2018 to oust its top fundraiser, Mari Ellen Loijens, amid allegations of emotional abuse, discrimination and sexual impropriety.
“Things got really, really bad,” says 34-year-old Zia MacWilliams, a DST program manager who left the non-profit in 2017 after four progressively stressful years on the job. “I honestly believe in the mission and loved working with my clients, but internally it was just out of control.”
Michelle Fox Wiles, 29, says she cut ties with DST for much the same reason.
“There was a really sexually charged environment,” she says. “One comment that really upset me—and this was right after I started working there in 2012—was when a manager said I got my job because the girl before me was ‘so hot’ that they didn’t want to work with her because she’d be a distraction. Chris said it. So, there was that constant of gender-based harassment, plus the nonstop drinking.”
Both MacWilliams and Wiles also accuse DST of perpetuating a pay gap that privileged their male counterparts.
After defecting from DST a little more than two years ago, MacWilliams teamed up with Wiles and nine of their ex-colleagues to pursue legal recourse. The non-profit Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto (CLSEPA) took the case and offered the DST board a chance to resolve the allegations out of court.
“In some ways, it is unusual for our organization to investigate the workplace culture at a fellow non-profit,” CLSEPA attorney Scott Hochberg wrote in an October 2017 letter to DST’s governing board. “What is motivating us to reach a positive outcome in this case is our belief that we as non-profit staff must embody justice and quality internally before we can reflect it out into the world through our work.”
It took a year and a month before the DST board agreed to hire the Law Offices of Amy Oppenheimer—a firm one CLSEPA attorney described as “well-known in the workers’ rights arena”—to investigate the allegations.
The probe, which commenced in late 2018 and concluded in July of this year, “substantiated a culture of drinking and inappropriate joking in the workplace,” according to an Aug. 28 letter from CLSEPA attorney Jennifer Smith to the 11 claimants. “The board seems to be genuinely concerned about the work environment that was described,” she wrote, “although … they believe that things are better now than they were three to five years ago.”
While the board insists that the probe found no proof of gender-based pay gap, Smith said in her letter that trustees expressed a desire to “see changes made.” One of the most significant changes, Smith went on to write, is that DST ramped up its reporting system by allowing employees to complain to the board directly and created a human resources position for the first time in the organization’s 14-year history. The board also conceded that alcohol “has been an issue,” Smith said, and instituted a “total prohibition.”
Richardson says she never read any of the Glassdoor reviews and is only vaguely aware of the CLSEPA negotiation. But she denies there were ever any problems with DST’s work environment. “Those claims,” she says, “were unfounded.”
A Bold Vision
A successful venture capitalist who gained global notoriety on the cusp of the 21st century as the CEO of the groundbreaking but controversial music-file-sharing platform Napster, Richardson brought the same change-the-world ethos to the charitable sector. Inspired by volunteering at a local soup kitchen after her son Chris left for college, the inveterate visionary founded Downtown Streets Team in 2005 with the resolve to end homelessness through job training and placement.
Under the DST model, local governments and business associations hire a team of homeless people to clean up streets in exchange for gift cards and case management. On its website, DST says its homeless clients, to date, have cleaned up 4,000 tons of debris from waterways that flow into the San Francisco Bay and 1.9 million cigarette butts. Since its founding, the non-profit says it has also helped nearly 1,000 clients find jobs with average hourly wages of $14.12 and just about as many secure housing.
DST’s “win-win-win” system of hiring the homeless, cleaning up trash and benefiting the broader community won renewed acclaim for the elder Richardson. Since its inception, DST has blossomed from a cash-strapped experiment in Palo Alto to a burgeoning enterprise spanning a dozen cities in two states with an $8 million annual budget.
Richardson—who makes upward of $200,000 in base pay as president and CEO of DST and an affiliated non-profit clinic called Peninsula Healthcare Connection—has racked up numerous accolades for her non-profit work. The San Francisco Chronicle named her a recipient of the Visionary Award earlier this year thanks to nominations from, among other dignitaries, Liccardo and his counterpart in Oakland, Mayor Libby Schaaf. “The honor salutes leaders who strive to make the world a better place and drive social and economic change by employing new, innovative business models and practices,” the Chron wrote about the distinction.
The New York Times gave her a similar honor a year prior. Also in 2018, the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties’ Joint Homeless Task Force recognized DST’s model as a “best practice” for supporting homeless people. In the conference room at DST’s main office, amid commendations from elected officials and chambers of commerce, there’s a shiny blue plaque designating DST as one of the “best non-profits to work for.”
In a blog post a few years back, Richardson credited her success for running her charitable enterprise the only way she knows how: “like a high-tech startup rather than a social service—action-oriented versus service-oriented.” To that end, she said, “we improvised, tried new ideas and constantly corrected our course.”
That constant course correction may guide the non-profit’s growth-focused public mission, but sources tell San Jose Inside that it elided internal mismanagement, which exposed employees to workplace abuses and, at times, put vulnerable clients at risk.
Wine and Dine
When one of DST’s original clients reconnected with his estranged daughter, two case managers wanted to celebrate his success by taking them out to dinner at a white-tablecloth restaurant in Mountain View. Since the client had struggled for years with alcohol abuse, the case managers told Richardson they planned to keep it a dry affair.
“By the time I showed up with the client, Richardson already had a bottle of wine at the table and was obviously a few drinks in,” one of the case managers wrote in a play-by-play of the occasion to the DST board a few years later. “We all kind of side-eyed one another. It was super awkward and completely inappropriate.”
The case manager, who asked to withhold her name, added, “The dinner was extremely uncomfortable, as Richardson got more and more intoxicated and continued to give our client alcohol.”
Chris Richardson (left) was accused by several employees of encouraging reckless alcohol consumption and making sexually charged comments. (Photo via Facebook)
The client abstained, according to the two case managers. But her dinner companions say Richardson drank enough that she began slurring her speech, and one of the staffers present felt the need to drive her home.
“On the way out of the restaurant, Eileen asked [the client] if he needed her to buy him a couple of beers at 7/11 to tide him over, and he declined,” the case manager-turned-reluctant chauffeur wrote in the same summary. “I had to help Eileen walk to my car. On the way to my car, she accosted two strangers in the middle of their conversation. It was like she was leaving a concert venue or a New Year’s party; she was far too intoxicated to be the CEO of a company that just left a business-related dinner.”
After the case manager got home, she called her co-worker to ask whether she should continue working for a boss who offered booze to a client trying to get sober. “This was the first moment when I really thought there was something deeply wrong with the leadership at DST,” she wrote, “and alcohol continued to be a concerning trend at DST.”
Sources who spoke to San Jose Inside admit the drinking seemed fun when they were new hires, but it began to feel inescapable. At holiday parties, it was common for managers and staffers alike to bring sleeping bags so they could crash at the office after drinking enough to pass out.
Erstwhile employees say one high-ranking director who was known for heavily imbibing while dressed as Santa Claus at the annual functions made it something of a tradition for attendees to sit in his lap before they claimed a gift from under the Christmas tree. A photo of holiday office party in 2015 shows him in his red-and-white St. Nick finery rubbing an oversized dildo on his face while Eileen Richardson apparently tries not to laugh. Another from that same event depicts the Santa cosplayer pouring a bag of white wine straight into the mouth of Chris Richardson, who kneels on the floor with his right fist thrust victoriously in the air.
Like mother, like son. “Eileen had a history of getting extremely inappropriate at office functions,” one former staffer noted in a written recollection of her few-year tenure at DST. “Some of these moments were kind of funny, even to me, such as the time she twerked upside down at the office Christmas party. However, similarly to Chris, Eileen did not know when to rein it in.”
Then there were the weekly Costco runs for booze, staff meetings where managers would partake and frequent klatches at Wine Affairs and other restaurants and bars near the office. Richardson didn’t respond to San Jose Inside’s query about whether the non-profit foot the bill for any of the alcohol purchases.
“One concern I had with these events was that Chris would often get intoxicated and then offer jobs to various staff members,” said one of the same case managers present for the restaurant episode. “I can remember two separate occasions when Chris offered me [an] opportunity in a very drunken state. … I know from talking to other employees that some of them found that it would be a mistake professionally to not go out drinking with Chris, because that’s where conversations about promotions most often happen.”
MacWilliams says she felt the same way about the lushy outings, which included annual trips to wine country where “everyone gets belligerently intoxicated.” On the Napa excursion in late August of 2016, she recounts how a manager asked Chris about having sex with a former co-worker. “Did you fuck her in the ass?” the manager allegedly asked. “Chris laughed and went on to describe their sexual relationship,” MacWilliams says.
One could technically opt out of the management trips, she adds, “but it is pretty well known that you won’t have a chance at a promotion if you don’t participate.”
Moving On
In addition to the review spurred by CLSEPA, an administrative law judge deemed MacWilliams’ claims of discrimination and a hostile work environment as credible. Separately, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing reviewed found them valid enough to grant her the right to sue DST if she so chooses. MacWilliams says she decided against litigation because she hoped CLSEPA’s amicable intervention would usher in meaningful accountability.
But the conclusion of the probe dashed any hope of true reforms, says MacWilliams, who’s now an MBA student at UC Berkeley and senior manager of federal child nutrition programs at Second Harvest Food Bank. Other than a new HR chief, she notes, leadership at DST remains virtually unaffected.
“If the same people are in charge,” she wonders, “is that real change?”
MacWilliams says she’s concerned that Santa Clara County, San Jose, Palo Alto and other public agencies continue to grant DST millions of dollars a year in taxpayer money without demanding more from the non-profit’s leadership. When she found out that the county was considering a new several-hundred-thousand-dollar agreement with DST earlier this year, she reached out to let decision-makers know about her troubling experiences with the organization.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced what it’s like to be afraid to go to work, but it was a constant battle for myself and, I know, other women in the company,” she wrote in an Aug. 11 email to county Office of Supportive Housing Director Ky Le. “I started to believe that I had no value, and that there was nothing wrong with some of the behavior that I described in my statement.”
When she left DST, MacWilliams went on to write, she just wanted to claim unemployment benefits. Once her former colleagues went to CLSEPA, she said she began to hope “for some sort of justice” and her goals “shifted to a pursuit of leadership change, compensation for the women who ... did not receive equal compensation for a period, and, ultimately, I wanted an apology.”
However, she lamented: “Years later, none of this has happened. Although I have come to peace with this, I truly believe that DST should not have access to public funds until those responsible for irrevocably hurting so many people have been held responsible.”
Le says DST wound up withdrawing its application for the county grant. But Peninsula Healthcare Connection, Richardson’s other non-profit, recently secured a federal designation that qualifies its clinic in Palo Alto for increased funding. “This is a huge step in providing quality health care services in the North County to the folks who need it most,” county Supervisor Joe Simitian, who pushed for $250,000 to help the non-profit gain its new funding status, said in a press release about the recent milestone. “Frankly the federal process is confusing as hell—a lot of agencies, acronyms and aggravation. But in plain language, this new status means Downtown Streets Team will have the resources to provide health services for more people.”
DST board chair Owen Byrd—general counsel for intellectual property litigation researcher firm Lex Machina—disputes CLSEPA’s characterization that the inquiry sustained any alleged impropriety. Oppenheimer conducted “a thorough, comprehensive and professional investigation,” he says, that “unearthed no significant concerns.”
The hiring of an HR manager earlier this year had more to do with “good corporate hygiene,” he adds, than any of the claims leveled against the non-profit. When asked for written corroboration to affirm as much, however, he refuses to share even a redacted copy or summary of the investigation.
“You can take my word for it as an attorney and executive and as someone who’s dealt with stuff like this for most of my career,” Byrd says. “There’s no way on Earth that this board of directors of a valuable non-profit in our community would not have addressed concerns that were real. We fulfilled out fiduciary duty under the law.
“And now,” he says, “we move on.”
Zia MacWilliams says the hostile work environment at DST caused her acute anxiety. (Photo by Greg Ramar)
One of the biggest backers, Dave Cortese.
> an unprecedented affordability crisis over the past decade,
Good grief!
The Golden Era of Trumpian prosperity is perceived by the tribal hunter-gatherers as “an unprecedented affordability crisis.”
All the wastelands where the the hunter-gatherers used to catch and eat ground squirrels or pick berries have now been turned into high-tech businesses, housing with indoor plumbing, universities, schools, and hospitals.
The only way to get a tasty ground squirrel in Silicon Valley any more is wilh a dollar bill, and those greedy capitalists want me to WORK for a dollar bill.
Do you believe it! WORK!
60% of homeless in San Jose are either disabled, over the age of 55, or both at the same time. Work is a pipe dream for many who are looking at minimum wage back-breaking jobs that will not allow for housing even at 40hours/week.
There is an economic crisis when minimum wage jobs are meant for high school kids summer funds, and to live somewhat decent (middle class-ish) requires $4k/month…
The only ones who can survive on a budget the the valley are the ones who have the personality type that lends itself to living in a house with 6-10 other people. The rest of us need the funds.
Lastly the newest estimate is 1/2 of all people in the USA will suffer from some type of mental illness in their lifetime, such as anxiety and/or depression. Imagine being socially anxious and only making enough money to live in a house with 8 other people. A living nightmare!
This is why homelessness is on the rise, not because the need to “get a job”
Dear SJ resident:
You seem to be assuming that it’s up to someone else to provide you a solution to your problem.
The long experience of human history is that humans have to solve their own problems. It is really quite rare for someone else to solve you feeding and habitation problems. A notable exception was slavery, where some people DID provide for the feeding and habitation of others. But there was a catch.
So, if someone else DOESN’T step up to solve your problems, what are you going to do?
Everything is connected. No average modern human makes it on their own. To think so is shortsighted and unwise. I doubt you’re a self-educated self-sustainable entity. Do you grow your own food? Make your own clothes? Did you invent the internet to type your comment? How about the measles vaccine? You’re living your comfortable modern life because many someone elses did solve your problems for you. Get a clue.
> Get a clue.
If you give people permission to fail and be losers, they will fail and be losers.
Allow me to signal some of MY virtue in your direction: I care more than you do, and you haven’t done enough.
Problem solved. I expect I’m in line for a Nobel Peace Prize.
And, Eileen has a commendation signed by Dave Cortese on the wall of her office.
DST gets millions throughout the Bay Area from pretty much every City. In my experience working directly with them, this does NOT surprise me AT ALL. Their teams (staff, not the homeless that they give nothing to pick up trash everywhere) are often times unprofessional and difficult. Literally, they have built an enterprise off of getting Cities to pay them for having homeless people pick up litter – and those homeless people get NO housing, NO pay and are used by DST and the Cities, especially San Jose. It’s not a work program – it’s a gravy train for the Richardson’s, and a bad deal for their clients.
Cortese wrote them letters of support.
I think this article is ridiculous. To bash a non profit who has done so much for the homeless. It’s a sad day when people make up lies to harm good people.
Did they get to the parties?
There are photos, dude.
Imagine all the good that could come when the non profit isn’t abusing its employees behind the scenes? Plus that abuse wasn’t being covered up by a board who cares more about appearance then the people who make the non profit function?
Santa is real! Gossip journalism at best. How did this make front page? How do I get in contact with these fine folk for my party needs?
DST isn’t perfect, and what organization is? However, they do good work. I know multiple case a managers, and their boots are on the ground. They put their heart and soul into the job and believe in the mission of helping the homeless rebuild their dignity. The housing situation is brutal in the Bay Area. We need people helping with this situation, and DST is doing that. I believe the claims and testimony shared here, but I also believe that DST is learning from those mistakes and is changing for the better. I would like to hear from team members (homeless clients) and their experiences in response to this article. I am sure there would be a mixture of responses, but it would help level out perspectives.
So Ruchardson works better when drunk and stoned on taxpayer money?
> They put their heart and soul into the job and believe in the mission of helping the homeless rebuild their dignity.
“Rebuild their dignity”?
The problem with all these virtue signaling narratives is that IN SPITE OF ALL EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY they always assume that their big hearts and and good intentions will achieve some positive benefit.
How much time, effort, and money is wasted on “rebuilding the dignity” of ONE irresponsible, unmotivated, grifting drug addict, who really doesn’t give a crap about his “dignity”?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
snowflakes eating thier own…
You want a post-Christian society, one filled with “my truths”, this is what youre going to get.
As a former employee, these claims are ridiculous. Saying that these claims stretch the truth would be a gross understatement. Disgruntled employees who often wandered into work from yoga at 11am or who were blatantly racist, claiming they didn’t get promoted because of their gender. Somehow now the hero’s that spoke up about acts that they invited and contributed to? How about a link to their staffing page where you can see that directorship is primarily female? My time at DST wasn’t perfect but we were a young start up at the time of these claims, working impossibly hard on our societies most pressing issues, partying hard as well. We were intimately tied and departing from each other that identity never felt decent, many didn’t take it well. I’m proud of my time at DST. We changed lives and had a blast doing it.
Hey Rob,
As another former employee you can f**k right off with your male privilege. I worked an average of 60 hours a week, had the highest retention And employment rate for my employed team members, had the highest rating in an anonymous client satisfaction survey, and yet was told “you can’t expect to work somewhere where men and women are paid the same” and I got the “privilege” of seeing my friends assaulted after being pressured into taking shots with their bosses. This is the publishable stuff and if you had half a brain you would be able to see that your experience was not the norm and I think the only reason you were “successful” is because you’re a man, definitely not because of your skill or talent. Lastly being drunk does not invite anyone to assault or harass you, even if it’s your boss. Makes me think we should look into your past actions since you clearly don’t know what consent means.
Any past or present employee that defends the Richardsons is perpetuating the very toxic and inappropriate environment that they have created. They will continue to get away with their actions unless stories like this continue to come forward and when their cash flow stops coming through. Even with this article, Eileen wrote to her staff that this is all just “salacious accusations” and that it doesn’t reflect the organization’s culture. The culture will not change and I would discourage others to support while Eileen, Chris, and Elfreda still hold power.
Comparatively Rob, you barely logged any time at DST. You know, many people enjoyed working for Weinstein too, but that doesn’t discredit the claims.
Santa here! It seems that DTST has been both naughty and nice. Google however, not so much. Is it classist to throw this non profit under the bus while big corps earn tax breaks and overtake our cities? Where is that front page article?
I met with homeless organizer Anthony King and several off his DTST acquaintances at the King library after a city council meeting. They claimed:
1. DSTS was not paying workers SJ’s minimum wage for work as required under the SJ contract.
2. DSTS was not paying in cash, but gift cards donated by companies like Target.
These practices resulted in other cities requiring payment in cash or equivalents like debit cards.
Mr. King (and confirmed by others at the meeting), asserted that affordable housing locked him into dependancy. He would loose his housing if his income level increased. Our social programs effectively enslave the vulnerable and maintain a dependency cycle.
Highly recommend reading the City Auditors report on SJ Homeless https://www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=33914
SJ Resident claims 60% of homeless are disabled. HUD says about 40%. Important to note that a disability doesn’t prevent employment, nor does reaching age 65.
Lastly, Eileen Richards founded DTST after her music piracy firm Napster was closed by authorities. How she escaped a RICO charge is beyond me. It appears the frat boy, tech startup Napster climate she fostered is alive and well at DTST.
Their 2017 IRS 990 shows Ms. Richardson received $227,840 while feeding at the public trough.
On balance, DSTS seems to do more good than harm, but like virtually all homeless non-profits, impact claims are *NOT* audited. We really don’t know what impact they are having.
DST doesn’t pay the homeless they recruit for their teams anything, beyond the gift cards you mention. At least in San Jose they don’t. Yet, they say they are experts in developing a workforce – but really, Cities use these teams to pick-up garbage everywhere to keep constituents quiet about litter “hot spots.” So DST gets many six-figure contracts, while their teams of homeless people continue to live on the street after working long days in tough conditions. Many are older adults with disabilities. DST does some good work – but I think overall, they aren’t getting people out of homelessness, they aren’t giving people skills to find quality employment – they are having the homeless pick up trash, and handing out gift cards.
I understand DTST is required to pay cash or cash equivalent (e.g.,debit card) in some other cities as they have expanded their operations. AFAIK, SJ has not changed the contract to require this. Also note, their “graduation” rate is very low.
So much for the idea that a woman-led organization would eliminate sexual harassment.
Unfortunately, not a unique story.
Just reading that a CEO/President of a non-profit is making at least $200k tells me a lot. (Sonny boy is probably not too far below that.) Part of the Homeless Industrial Complex I see. We will never resolve the homelessness issue because it would disrupt too many affluent and entitled lifestyles.
Keep Santa out of your smear piece! The war on CHRISTmas is upon us and this is nothing more than another sad attempt by the secular snowflake left to wedge Santa (fat Jesus) out of the holiday. Why else would such a subpar article make it to the front page?
Santa isn’t real – I hate to break it to you. Please take your antiquated thought process to the Fox News message boards.
> Please take your antiquated thought process to the Fox News message boards.
Be careful what you wish for.
If too many people go to the Fox message boards, CNN might go out of business.
Very interesting
Homelessness comes to be complex
Those who profit on those in real need
As grandson asked grandmother, ‘will i be a good or a bad wolf?’ Grandmother says to her grandson, as she holds him warmly and looks directly into his eyes,
‘you will become the one “You Feed”.
Blatant misuse of hard earned tax dollars by overpaid, drunken, unprofessional bureaucrats. Where is the oversight?
Good job writing again about what really matters Jeniffer! What about perverted Trump, Biden, Bloomberg, and the whip cream of Andrew Yang?
Excellent reporting. Jenn Wadsworth knocked it out of the park. Local reporting is needed more than ever in Silicon Valley.
As a former employee..though i did not agree with all ther operational decisions…DST do a lot of good work…their Business Plan to help Homeless people get back into society has helped many people..to take funds away from this program would be a detriment to people who they help..fix the Administrative practiced but don’t take away what is working to help fix the homeless problem.
I cannot personally comment on DTST’s actions, as I was never a part of that organization, but I was a client of New Directions, one of the related non profits, and had several female case managers during the last 3 years of our 10 year stint on the streets of the South Bay. What I can tell you is that while it is very disturbing to find out that this kind of thing went on, as a client I was never treated with anything but respect. My wife and I were homeless for 10 years, and were made homeless by the 2008 recession and my wife’s extensive medical bills, as well as my physical injuries from 35 plus years working in construction. I also can’t speak for anyone else, but we used to party pretty hard in the field of bustin a$$ 24/7 , so I can only imagine what it’s like for those who had to come and listen to me or others whine, bitch and moan about how tough our lives are. But I imagine that it would get old in a hurry! And while that certainly doesn’t condone such behavior, I do understand it. It is still disturbing to think that while we were going through one of the toughest times in our experience, the people who were being paid to fix our situation were having a good time. Also, remember that there’s always going to be those that screw around, while everyone else is bustin their hump. I also never expected to get help with our situation, so it was a pleasant surprise. The case managers that I had, worked their proverbial a$$es off getting us housing, and I owe them a debt I can never repay. I am still a client.