Over-burdened taxpayers finance Montgomery County’s affordable housing initiatives, which supposedly help essential workers such as police officers, firefighters and teachers find housing in the increasingly unaffordable Washington suburb where even town houses can cost $450,000 or more. But what if public funds support a tax-exempt non-profit that just happens to share facilities with a for-profit business providing domestic staff for affluent Potomac mansion-dwellers?
The Housing Opportunity Commission is an independent, state-chartered agency that raises more than half of its $180 million budget from managing and financing low-cost housing. But nearly half of its funds come from federal, state and county taxpayers.
HOC, in turn, provides about a third of the $85,662 revenue for the annual one-day Affordable Housing Conference of Montgomery County. AHC is a 501c(3), tax-exempt public charity that relies on “donors in the public, private, corporate and nonprofit sectors” to host an annual summit, the mission of which is to “bring together elected officials, housing and community development leaders, business professionals, activists and others to work toward affordable housing solutions.”
Those “solutions” apparently include finding domestic help for upscale Potomac mansions, judging by the fact that AHC co-chair Barbara Goldberg-Goldman uses the same phone number for the tax-exempt charity AND her for-profit Rockville-based company, Regal Domestics. The company’s Web site says it specializes in finding “social secretaries, personal assistants, house managers, chefs, chauffeurs, butlers, nannies, cooks and housekeepers” for wealthy families who can afford to hire domestic help, including “yacht staff.”
A former employee of the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Goldberg-Goldman is also a former HOC chairman. In fact, the two groups are so cozy that AHC’s 2004 brochure told those registering for the conference to “make your check payable to the Housing Opportunities Commission.”
Goldberg-Goldman, who lives in Potomac, obviously knows a lot of other well-heeled county residents, since she was one of Montgomery County’s top fundraisers for Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign. She was also accused of trying to choreograph the county executive election last year by initially extending invitations to AHC’s May 6, 2006, candidates forum “only to the Democratic candidates” (her words), even though 501c(3) groups are barred from taking sides in partisan political campaigns. Independent candidate Robin Ficker claims Goldberg-Goldman opened the forum to other candidates only after he threatened to sue for access.
IRS rules on 501c(3) charities are clear: “The organization must not be organized for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator’s family …” And IRS rules expressly forbid “political campaign intervention [that] includes any and all activities that favor or oppose one or more candidates for public office.” Registering as a charity, accepting public funds and then making that charity a resource for a privately owned household staffing agency and partisan political activities doesn’t seem to come close to IRS criteria for a tax-exempt organization.
