Tampa homeless program uses unpaid, destitute residents as steady labor force, revenue source

[Snarkoleptic]

http://www.tampabay.com/news/specials/tampa-homeless-program-uses-unpaid-destitute-residents-as-steady-labor/2208350

For years, New Beginnings founder and CEO Tom Atchison has sent his unpaid homeless labor crews to Tampa Bay Rays, Lightning and Bucs games, the Daytona 500 and the Florida State Fair. For their shelter, he's had homeless people work in construction, landscaping, telemarketing, moving, painting, even grant-writing.

Atchison calls it "work therapy." Homeless advocates and labor lawyers call it exploitative, and possibly illegal. It is the latest questionable way Atchison has used homeless people, and public money, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.

Now Atchison is applying to run Hillsborough County's new homeless shelter, a contract worth millions of public dollars that would entrust him with the county's most vulnerable people.

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• Employees and residents said Atchison took residents' Social Security checks and food stamps, even if they amounted to more than residents owed in program costs.

• A New Beginnings contractor told the Times he overbilled the state for at least $80,000 of grant money, then gave the money to the program instead of returning it.

• While claiming to provide counseling, New Beginnings employs no one clinically trained to work with addicts or the mentally ill. One minister cited his experience running a motorcycle gang as his top qualification. The Times couldn't verify the doctorate in theology Atchison said he earned from a defunct online school.