Week of July 2, 2009
| Attorney: Nonprofit acted legally in selling Sugarhill Apartments AIDS facility By Jacquelyn Weiner The lawyer for a defunct non-profit group accused of selling a government-funded AIDS facility to a private company without required government permission says his client did nothing wrong. Minorities Overcoming the Virus through Education, Responsibility and Spirituality Inc. sold Sugarhill Apartments, an affordable housing facility for AIDS patients funded by US Department of Housing and Urban Development grants, to Golden Sterling, LLC in 2007. City commissioners allocated $10,000 to the city attorney's office to investigate at a commission meeting last month after they were told that the department is requiring they submit a repayment plan for $4 million — nearly $1 million of which resulted from the Sugar Hill sale — before it releases $12 million in stimulus funds. The city says the sale was potentially fraudulent because any sale of the property had to be approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which was not done. The non-profit was also supposed to remain an AIDS facility for 10 years after full occupancy, according to city documents, yet the residents living there when the apartments were sold to a private company were evicted. Still, Minorities Overcoming the Virus through Education, Responsibility and Spirituality, or M.O.V.E.R.S., cannot be held accountable for the nearly $1 million the city must repay to the Department of Housing and Urban Development because the requirements weren't attached to any documents regarding the property, said Marc Douthit, who represents the non-profit. M.O.V.E.R.S. closed its clinic last summer and is "effectively closed down," he said. The city acknowledges that there was no written covenant detailing terms of sale, something that is now required, George Mensah, director of community development, said at the city commission meeting. In response to other allegations raised at the meeting, Mr. Douthit said statements about former M.O.V.E.R.S. board members avoiding inquiries or that the people behind M.O.V.E.R.S. and the apartment's previous nonprofit owner, the Economic Opportunity Family Health Center, may be related are "completely manufactured," he said. Mr. Douthit also said he was unaware of any current investigations of M.O.V.E.R.S. He didn't have a chance to defend the non-profit as it was attacked at the meeting because he wasn't informed they would be discussing M.O.V.E.R.S., he said. Mr. Douthit said he received a call from the city the week of the meeting asking what had happened to the money earned in Sugar Hill's sale but the city failed to inform him that the matter would be discussed at the upcoming commission meeting. "At no time during that conversation, which would have been a very good time to bring it up, did anybody say, "Hey, this is on at a commission meeting,'" Mr. Douthit said. "It would be a good idea for M.O.V.E.R.S. to send somebody.… It would have probably saved the city $10,000." Mr. Douthit said that "every dollar" from the sale has been tracked through yearly county audits and any profit from the Sugar Hills sale was used to pay off debts and loans on the property. "The story that's not getting out is that I could parade at any commission meeting literally thousands of people that say they're alive thanks to M.O.V.E.R.S.," he said. "And if it gets to that, that's what I'll do." The Department of Housing and Urban Development chose to request the city repay the nearly $1 million allocated toward the Sugar Hill property after an eight-month investigation in 2008 which revealed that "the property had been sold without proper authorization," said Armando Fana, field director for the department. The department chose to go after the city rather than M.O.V.E.R.S. to cover the funds because that is the party the agency dealt with, Mr. Fana said. "The sub-grantee is the responsibility of the City of Miami," he said. The State Attorney's Office also looked into the matter but no investigation was opened, according to an e-mail from Ed Griffith, public information officer. The city attorney plans to turn its investigation over to the Public Corruption Unit of the State Attorney's Office if it finds evidence of wrongdoing. Mr. Griffith said he could neither confirm nor deny whether there is a pending investigation.
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