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…