Two weeks after union members called for top bosses to resign at Sunstone Way, workers at the nonprofit homeless camp operator got an email saying Sunstone will permanently close on July 1.
The March 12 memo to workers blamed the closure on reduced funding and increased expenses, but gross mismanagement revealed in a Feb. 12 whistleblower lawsuit likely played a role. In the lawsuit, a fired financial director accused three Sunstone execs of misspending hundreds of thousands of dollars that the organization received from Multnomah County and the City of Portland to shelter and feed the homeless.
“The general sentiment among workers that I’ve heard from is that this (closure) was a move to skirt accountability,” said Sunstone case manager Joy Nicholson, a union steward and board member at AFSCME Local 1790.
Nicholson worries that Sunstone won’t even make it to July; it has had trouble making payroll in the past.
Sunstone manages two motel shelters for Multnomah County, two “safe rest” villages and an overnight shelter under contract with the City of Portland, and a tiny home village for Clackamas County.
Nicholson expects the city and counties will hand over management of the camps to another non-profit operator, but whether the new operators will hire the old employees or recognize their union is still to be determined.
