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Ethics: Don't Leave Home Without Them

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By Daniel Ruth

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 19, 2008

Let's see if you can pass a fairly simple ethics test:

You are hired by Hillsborough County's affordable housing office to conduct seminars required of first-time, low-income buyers on the intricacies of purchasing a home.

Here's the question: Would it be proper for you to own a nonprofit company receiving taxpayer funding to teach people how to buy a home, while at the same time operating a separate for-profit mortgage business that offers loans to your students?

If the answer is no, you passed. If the answer is yes, you probably have a grand future in county government.

In 2002, the county retained Sylvia Alvarez, executive director of the Housing and Education Alliance, to conduct the classes for first-time homebuyers before they could qualify to receive down-payment assistance.

But over the next four years, Alvarez also collected more than $5.2 million in state and federal housing grants through its county contracts.
Home Cooking
During that time, the Housing and Education Alliance processed mortgage loans for some 200 graduates of Alvarez's class. Do you think they all got A's?

You might say not only did these students learn all about how to buy a house, they also took a Master Class on home cooking.

HEA received a fee for each person who took her class and later bought a house. A for-profit subsidiary of HEA, American Liberty, received a commission for each mortgage it approved and a separate development company made more than $2 million from the sale of 25 homes.

Now if you're thinking this seems awfully cozy, surely there must be a rule, a regulation - SOMETHING - that says you can't do more double dipping than Baskin-Robbins, well you would be wrong.

This is Hillsborough County, after all, whose motto ought to be - "Where's Mine?"

Alvarez was shamelessly charming, seeing nothing hinky with American Liberty handling the mortgages of her students she was also being paid by the county to teach.
High Art Form

"What's so wrong with that, with both of us making a fee?" she told The Ministry of Truth.

You do have to admire a robust display of "What? Me worry?" chutzpah practiced at such a high art form.

As it turns out, while the county has conflict-of-interest clauses governing its contracts with nonprofit groups, it does not have a specific, detailed policy that deals with a nonprofit organization also owning a for-profit company.

Maybe there is no dotted i, no crossed t, that says Alvarez couldn't do more double dipping than Michael Phelps.

But, at the risk of committing heresy, wouldn't common sense dictate there is simply something awfully stinky poo-poo here in essentially influencing a captive audience attending a class one is already being paid to conduct to then use the services of another company one owns to further enhance one's bottom line?

At the moment the U.S attorney, along with the FBI and federal housing officials, is looking into the county's various housing programs.

In the midst of all this, maybe they'll find the tacky double-dipping was legal. But that doesn't make it right.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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