Sac County to abandon Mather progams to VOA

The Bee gives us the bad news this morning that the county is set to throw in the towel and hand its homeless programs at Mather over to the Christian-faith-based organization Volunteers of America for Greater Sacramento.

Horrors.

Homeless people who have nothing or next to nothing should be, at very least, under some protection from the government.

Instead, the county intends to pass the buck and put homeless folk fully under the whip of VOA, the organization that ran the Concentration Camp at Cal Expo ― known as Overflow ― during winter seasons in years past.

VOA (along with Loaves & Fishes) is a central Sacramento homeless-help organization that follows a philosophy of "warehousing the rabble" as opposed to helping homeless folk become more responsible and, then, opening up our world to opportunities and, possibly, eventually, real happiness.

VOA pays its national CEO/President an obscene salary, in excess of $300,000, and, locally, has many salaried employees working solely for the purpose of polishing the organization's image.  [VOA ― to its credit ― does have a four-star (highest) rating at Charity Navigator, but it should be noted that Charity Navigator, a conservative organization, promotes charities as businesses and does not deduct, for ratings purposes, for an org paying huge salaries, as I certainly think it should!  See Charity Navigator's 2009 CEO Compensation Study.]

VOA is a failed organization that properly had county programs taken away from it a year or so ago.  Now, because it's there raising money and has employees to feed, it will be thrown a big, meaty bone by the county, at the expense - I dare say, I must say - of homeless people's future livelihoods and lives.

The county has responsibilities toward its citizens that it should not be allowed to farm out to an essentially-private organization that, weirdly, overpays employees while expecting gullible retirees and others in our community to volunteer their time.

The usual suspect homeless-help organizations in Sacramento always keep their market share of the business of running homeless people around in circles.  It is an ongoing tragedy.