• PROVIDERS DID NOT TRANSITION CLIENTS TO PERMANENT HOUSING IN A TIMELY MANNER – 62 percent of clients at Pilgrim Icahn resided in transitional housing for more than the nine month average, costing DHS $4.3 million (one client remained for over six years, costing DHS $234,397). 22 percent of clients at Aladdin Hotel resided beyond the nine month average stay, costing DHS $1.4 million (one client remained for over four years, costing DHS $118,933). “The City is cutting proven programs that help to prevent homelessness, while at the same time spending taxpayer dollars to shelter New Yorkers in unsafe, over-priced hotel rooms that do not effectively reduce homelessness,” said Public Advocate BILL DE BLASIO. “It is time to end this irresponsible practice and implement practical policies that will help prevent homelessness and move more people from shelter to stable, permanent housing.”
“As homelessness increases and New Yorkers struggle to make ends meet,
it is now more important than ever to be watchful of agency performance and efficiency,” said Councilmember YDANIS RODRIGUEZ, member of the City Council General Welfare Committee. “There are disturbing inequities going on within DHS, and they must shape up if it is to provide real and valuable services to those who are being hit hardest by the recession.”

“Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean you should live a life
without dignity, said MARY BROSNAHAN, Executive Director of the
Coalition for the Homeless. “Our most vulnerable neighbors need to be
helped back on their feet and moved into permanent housing, not
relegated to squalor.”

“These findings are disconcerting on many levels,” said JUDITH
GOLDINER, Supervising Attorney, Law Reform Unit, Legal Aid Society.
“DHS must provide livable, clean space for the City’s increasing
homeless population. By failing to adequately monitor providers, DHS
has shortchanged the city’s homeless, and taxpayers throughout the
city. Such waste is unacceptable in any climate, and it is even more
harmful during a time of economic strife.”

Previous audits and letters by the Comptroller’s Office in June 1998,
October 2003, June 2007 and June 2008 had also cited DHS for its
failure to contract formally with providers for shelter and social
services.

The recommendations made by Comptroller Liu to DHS include:
• Enter into contracts with all providers of shelter and social
services that delineate services to be provided, establish performance
standards, and provide termination clauses and remedies.
• Immediately institute a sound and effective system of internal
controls and monitor providers to ensure that they accurately record
and report client-lodging days. These controls should include, but not
be limited to, conducting random, periodic inspections of client
sign-in logs.
• Pay providers only for shelter and social services and calculate
provider payments based on accurate client-lodging data and
mutually-agreed-upon daily rates.
• Conduct unannounced periodic site inspections and interviews with
clients and staff.
• Work with providers that consistently fail to meet placement targets
to improve their performance.

Comptroller Liu credited Deputy Comptroller for Audit H. Tina Kim and
her team in the Bureau of Audit for presenting the findings and
recommendations. The full March 2010 audit report is available at
www.comptroller.nyc.gov.

###

However, Internal Revenue Service records show the group has a lackluster history of accounting for its finances, and that the organization has paid the performer and his business partner at least $410,000 for rent, production services, and Jean’s appearance at a benefit concert.

Though the Wyclef Jean Foundation, which does business as Yele Haiti Foundation, was incorporated 12 years ago–and has been active since that time–the group only first filed tax returns in August 2009.

That month, the foundation provided the IRS with returns covering calendar years 2005, 2006, and 2007–the only periods for which it has publicly provided a glimpse at its financial affairs.

In 2006, Jean’s charity reported contributions of $1 million, the bulk of which came from People’s Magazine in exchange for the first photos of a pregnant Angelina Jolie (the actress reportedly directed that the publication’s payment go to Jean’s charity, not her personally).

The foundation’s 2006 tax return, the group paid $31,200 in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Jerry Duplessis, who, like Jean, is a foundation board member. A $31,200 rent payment was also made in 2007 to Platinum Sound. The rent, tax returns assure, “is priced below market value.” The recording studio also was paid $100,000 in 2006 for the “musical performance services of Wyclef Jean at a benefit concert.”

Jean denounced charges that he misappropriated funds from his charity, Yele Haiti, and defended the foundation and his commitment to Haiti relief efforts.

“Let me be clear: I denounce any allegation that I have ever profited personally through my work with Yele Haiti,” Jean said in a statement released Saturday. “These baseless attacks are simply not true.” Jean vigorously defended himself in a YouTube video posted Saturday.

“After digging kids up and finding cemeteries for them … this is what I come back to, an attack on my integrity and my foundation,” Jean said in the video.

He went on to explain that the charges were business expenses for Yele Haiti’s fundraising efforts. “You can’t put a show together without a production. You need lights, you need a stage … All of these things have to be accounted for,” he said.

That six-figure payout, the tax return noted, “was substantially less than market value.” The return, of course, does not address why Jean needed to be paid to perform at his own charity’s fundraiser. But the largest 2006 payout–a whopping $250,000–went to Telemax, S.A., a for-profit Haiti company in which Jean and Duplessis were said to “own a controlling interest.”

Rodney claims that he has been having serious health consequences as a result of the implantation. He is offering a reward of $100 million to anyone who can assist in finding a civil rights attorney who is willing to defend him.

Rodney alleges that the Pittsburgh Feds have broken federal laws, and now the Southern Court District of New York and the Federal Government are trying to coverup the crime until the statute of limitation runs out.

In addition, the New York FBI and the people in Washington are paying everyone who calls his cell phone millions of dollars to cover-up this case.

“The media, too, is being paid millions of dollars not to release his story to the public,” he adds. Rodney is appealing to the
public for help and claims to be in “dire need of medical attention.”

Street Hype was unable to contact the FBI, however, one of the newspaper legal advisors has dismissed Rodney’s claims
as non-sensical and without merit.