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Marjorie Hill, GMHC's First Black Woman CEO, Thrown Under the Bus

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Justin Samuels
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Marjorie Hill's firing from GMHC  is only the tip of the iceberg concerning the massive welfare fraud that has occured there over the years.  Marjorie Hill was the first Black Woman CEO of Gay Men's Health Crisis, the nation's largest HIV and HIV prevention organization in the country. GMHC is based in New York, NY. Hill alleged her firing was because of her race and gender. Hill herself is partially responsible for the financial wreck that GMHC has become, but that too only scratches the surface.  I am speaking as someone who is a former client of GMHC .  I got six months of therapy there.

When faced with rent increases on the old GMHC building on West 24th Street, Dr. Hill had GMHC move to the PBS Building on 33rd Street.  Only much of the space they rented on the 6th and 7th floor of the PBS building isn't used.  In effect, this organization that is squandering both taxpayer and donated dollars on space it isn't using.

There's also the issue of the services GMHC allegedly provides.   GMHC allegedly provides its clients with a vast array of legal services.  Only in the time I was at GMHC , I never met anyone who GMHC had represented in any sort of case whatsoever.  Most of the clients I spoke to felt that legal services there did nothing.   GMHC offers these services to get government grants and private donations, but there's little real evidence they do anything with them.  Check GMHC 's Legal Page.  There they list all the legal services they supposedly offer.  Yet they do not list any cases that they won for their clients.  That's strange, as law firms and other legal organizations/departments typically list important cases that they won for their clients.  I looked up the number of cases that GMHC represented for clients on the NY State Supreme Court Case look up, and the New York Civil Court case look up.  In the past 5 years, as GMHC and as Gay Men's Health Crisis, GMHC apparently only represented three clients.  Housing Works, another HIV and homeless services organization, represented 43 cases in that time period.

Then there's the so called Workforce development program.  Allegedly this program helps clients get jobs.  Only after speaking to many clients at GMHC , and Workforce Development itself, they almost never help GMHC clients get jobs.   They deal with very few companies.  Here is website of GMHC workforce development.  Notice they list no employers they have a relationship.  That's an indication of how active their department is.  Generally speaking when clients talk to them, the clients are told to submit a resume.  For the most part they never call them back, as very little effort is made to help GMHC clients find their job.  Why would an organization that declares itself the patron saint of mentally ill, addicted, HIV positive, and otherwise marginalized people do so little to help their clients return to the workforce?

Because the more clients enter GMHC 's building, the more money GMHC can get from the government and donations.  They really have no interest in their clients ever working again.   GMHC clients are encouraged to apply for and get the vast array of welfare programs  available to them.  Once the clients are on welfare, GMHC has a plethora of support groups available for them.  They even give them metrocards to come.  Check the huge number of groups that GMHC has.  In the past, some of these groups have been about how Black men should come out of the closet to their families.   Really, do we need taxpayer dollars to support this?  As the Villager Reports:

" "Using SQL as our back end, we scan these cards when someone comes in to get a meal," Tainer said. "Clients just go, scan it in front of a normal barcode scanner, and it counts them as having received a meal."

Clients can also use the cards to check into every service they use at GMHC ."

So for every service a client uses at GMHC , the client's card is scanned.  Mind you, the cards no longer are identified by photo.  So depending on how the data is tabulated, once a client is scanned in for different services the client could even been counted as more than one person.

There's more on the welfare programs GMHC helps their clients get on.   HASA pays  for the rent, food stamps, cash assistance, transportation money, and free medical assistance for HIV clients.  As GMHC helps its clients get on HASA, how much more assistance (government money) could its clients need?  The overwhelming majority of these clients would be able to work if they stopped doing drugs.   Addiction  in that community is a major problem, and unfortunately all the welfare assistance does is enable it.  So addicted are the staff at GMHC to government money that they try to find ways for their clients to retain welfare  while working.  So instead of clients pulling themselves together and seeking private insurance plans that they would have to pay for, GMHC enables clients to seek low paying jobs and get medicaid.  Some clients even underreport their earnings so they can continue this welfare scam.

As for Dr. Majorie Hill herself, the last foolish thing she did was after staff layoffs and reductions in salary, she decides to take a 3 paid month sabbatical.   Even by GMHC standards, this was not a wise use of resources.  Why pay a CEO to take a vacation for three months while everyone else is getting salary cuts?  The board was correct in firing Hill.  But Hill was mainly thrown under the bus.   Since Hill's firing former CFO David Fazio has left GMHC, as has director of communications  Dirk McCall.

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Screenwriter. Historian. BA in History and certificate in Latin American studies from Cornell University. MA in English Education from Columbia University. Very interested in public policy.

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