Three weeks after a forensic audit into BC Housing revealed mismanagement issues, the Crown corporation’s largest housing provider has revealed its new interim CEO.
Catherine Roome, co-founder of Vancouver’s Pulse Technologies, will assume leadership of Atira Women’s Resource Society on July 1 and will remain until a permanent CEO is recruited.
She takes over from Janice Abbott, who resigned in the fallout of the audit that uncovered a conflict of interest related to her marriage to former BC Housing CEO Shane Ramsay. Abbott had been in the top job since 1992.
“Our tenants are people who are facing many challenges and I have great empathy for them. I have taken this position to ensure they get the best support possible,” Roome said Wednesday.
“I have two goals — get the financial house in order and get to an operational excellence with respect to safety.”
Wednesday’s press conference is the first Atira has held since the audit was made public on May 8. Since then, neither Abbott nor any its board members have granted interviews to Global News.
Roome thanked the media and the public for its patience as it “worked on internal issues” before facing reporter scrutiny. She relied heavily on speaking notes when questioned about challenges facing Atira, including the deplorable state of some of its single-room occupancy hotels.
“The biggest challenge that Atira faces is how to deliver low- to no-barrier supportive housing to the most vulnerable populations. I feel very supported by this board,” Roome said.
“I am looking forward to understanding more about what is going on with respect to housing.”
Roome said her expertise does not lie in social services or housing, but in finance and public safety. She will be meeting biweekly with BC Housing’s new CEO, Vincent Tong, to get up to speed.
She hopes to visit an SRO as “soon as possible” to understand the breadth of some of the problems, she added.
The May 8 audit raised serious questions about the internal practices of both BC Housing and Atira.
The Ernst and Young report determined no individual benefitted materially from the marriage between Abbott and Ramsay, who held their positions at the same time, but identified “significant risk to public funds” as a result of questionable oversight and distribution practices.
While Ramsay was CEO, it found Atira was awarded contracts without a competitive process, received a substantial increase in funding, and received at least $3 million in COVID-19 funds without appropriate internal BC Housing approval. It also found BC Housing kept records poorly and delayed financial reviews of Atira.
It determined Ramsay had modified meeting minutes to alter concerns raised about an Atira property purchase, and regularly deleted text messages despite habitually conducting BC Housing business through texts.
Atira, meanwhile, took many actions contrary to its operating agreements, such as using $2 million in restricted, repayable funds to help fund a property purchase. It also bypassed BC Housing’s standard approval channels and approached senior members of the Crown corporation directly for funding and other requests multiple times.
Atira board member Amy McCallion said Wednesday that throughout Ramsay and Abbott’s overlapped time as leaders, the board had no reason to believe that existing conflict of interest policies weren’t being followed.
“When the report came out and the allegations were different, we took that as a board very seriously and began to take action,” she said.
“I really want to try to keep the focus on the incredibly important work that Atira, as an organization, does to service some of the most vulnerable people in our population that society often chooses to leave behind, and my confidence both in bringing Catherine in as interim CEO and the other steps that we are taking at present.”
McCallion said she remains “very confident” that Atira is the right organization to continue housing thousands of vulnerable women, children and gender diverse people in more than 2,600 homes it operates.
Since the Ernst and Young audit, Atira has established a task force to oversee a “third-party review” of its policies and practices, including how the organization makes decisions on real estate and deals with potential conflicts of interest. That process has already been criticized, however, as the task force includes Atira’s board chair and chairs of the society’s finance and governance committees.
Atira has also returned $1.9 million in surplus funds to the government and agreed to have a government representative appointed to its board as an observer. The provincial government, meanwhile, has launched physical inspections of all Atira’s buildings, restricted new funding to the provider and suspended all of its operating agreements until another review is completed.
“We are looking at governance practices as part of that and we’ve been completely open and transparent that that is what we’re doing,” McCallion said.
Atira’s employees have also successfully unionized in the aftermath, joining the BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) on Monday.
That was finalized less than two weeks after two people — an employee on leave and a former employee — raised serious workplace safety concerns at Atira.
Ksenija Collinge, a peer manager on leave, told Global News she endured months of harassment at the office, with one employee routinely bringing a knife to the office. Global News verified that she filed both a human resources complaint and a worker’s compensation board report about the situation, but has not verified her specific allegations.
The former staffer of Atira Property Management, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said she was bullied too, and referenced a worker bringing a knife to the office as well. She made a WorkSafe BC claim in relation to her allegations and received a disability award.
The May 8 BC Housing forensic audit was not the first to scorch Atira’s internal practices.
Last year, a leaked report from BDO Canada LLP claimed Atira’s board made decisions based on “incorrect, incomplete or misleading information,” applied “inconsistent accounting practices across the portfolio,” and operated on “assumptions that BC Housing will cover any overages” to its budget. BC Housing and Atira initiated the financial review and it was sent to the non-profit organization on Nov. 7, 2018.
McCallion said the board took actions to implement the report’s recommendations at that time, while Roome said Atira carries an “incredibly high responsibility” to repair the break in public trust and will fully disclose the results of both its own review and the BC Housing-led operational review.
“We appreciate the support of the B.C. government and BC Housing, and look to others like our lenders, partners and the municipalities we serve in for their support to help us achieve our goals of applying new best practices to keep Atira whole and functioning,” she said.
McCallion further said Atira is committed to implementing the recommendations that stem from the multiple audits and evaluations underway.
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