A non-profit that runs a New York City-funded homeless shelter couldn’t say how it spent almost $2.4 million in funding over three years.
The organization, the Institute for Community Living, received the funds from the city’s Department of Homeless Services, which “did not complete required expenditure reviews,” according to an audit from New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
The report also found that the non-profit may have wasted more than 155,000 meals worth nearly half a million dollars from 2016 to 2019.
“Our audit found a shelter charged expenses to the city with little or no explanation and unconscionably and regularly threw mountains of food into the trash,” DiNapoli told the New York Daily News. “New York City has a homelessness crisis and must demand more accountability from shelter providers, who are paid millions of dollars.”
The Institute for Community Living was in contract with the city Department of Homeless Services since 2014 through December 2021 to provide shelter and medical care to mentally ill and drug-addicted women at the Tillary Street Women’s Shelter, the Daily News reported.
DiNapoli focused on the period of 2016 to 2019, finding that the nonprofit claimed $24.5 million in reimbursable expenses from the city but that $1.2 million in personal service costs weren’t eligible to be reimbursed and that $1.1 million “in indirect and other expenses were also ineligible,” the Daily News reported.
While conducting the audit, DiNapoli asked the organization for employee time records, something the non-profit couldn’t provide. The audit also had few records for other expenses the organization claimed to have, including more than $71,000 in utility expenses, $61,000 in insurance costs, and nearly $52,000 in facility repairs, the Daily News reported.
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