Ousted Public Works boss and current federal prisoner Mohammed Nuru had his flaws, but he did excel at following the money. And, in the case of the homeless work program Downtown Streets, which disseminates yellow-clad currently and formerly unhoused people throughout San Francisco to clean and beautify their surroundings, he found himself at a loss.
“I remember Mohammed, of all people, was really negative about this program,” recalled a former colleague. Nuru would muse incredulously to his coworkers about the Downtown Streets Team’s business model: “They don’t pay them anything? They give them gift cards? This is bullshit.”
In a lengthier and less profane manner, the city of San Francisco has spent some 18 months attempting to determine if that’s the case. The outcome of the city’s long-running audit and investigation could ding Downtown Streets for hundreds of thousands of dollars — and, even more damagingly for an outfit doing work in 20 California cities, declare its volunteer-based business model to be unlawful.
“Our preliminary findings are that DST [Downtown Streets Team] owes a total of $475,529.98 in health care expenditures to 203 current and former workers, and $62,975.92 in penalties to the City,” stated a Sept. 2022 missive from the city’s Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement to Downtown Streets’ Menlo Park-based attorney. “You’ll notice that $394,506.67 of the restitution amount is for the group of workers DST contends are ‘volunteers.’ The City...
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