For more than a quarter century, Anne Paris threw a lifeline to women overcoming addiction, founding Paradise House in the Broadway-Fillmore area to help such women reconnect with their children and turn their lives around.
Now it’s Paris who’s waiting on help, in the form of $186,000 the board agreed to pay her but which is now tied up as the nonprofit Paradise Opportunities Inc. dissolves.
The board ultimately decided it had to pull the plug with expenses outpacing revenue as government funds either shrank or bureaucratic hoops meant they couldn’t be tapped to begin with. It sold the 21-bed shelter at 36 Stanislaus St. for $415,000 last year, after previously selling some of its smaller facilities to try to stay afloat.
Now the money is frozen in a dissolution process controlled by the courts and the state Attorney General’s Office – leaving Paris with no salary, no access to the funds she was counting on for retirement and, she said, creditors hounding her until she explains what’s going on.
People are also reading…
“I want everybody to be paid. I don’t want anybody to sue me when it’s really not my business,” she said.
Opened in 1993, Paradise House included several homes and buildings on Stanislaus and Mills streets – part of Mills was even renamed “Anne Paris Way” in a 2018 city ceremony – to provide temporary housing, counseling, job training and rehab services for women recovering from addiction. Some of its workers were themselves recovering addicts and former Paradise House residents.
But over the years, as the county cut funding, Paradise House began selling properties as it tried to navigate what Paris described as a Byzantine process to become state certified as a provider of chemical dependence residential services. But that certification, which would have opened the door to federal funding, never came.
In the meantime, Paris contends, money that should have been set aside each month for her retirement wasn’t because there always were more pressing needs – like paying the staff and keeping the lights on.
Now she waits on a dissolution process while having no idea how long that will take or where she stands in line relative to other creditors, like vendors, utility companies, the IRS and the City of Buffalo.
She said she was advised to get her own lawyer to intercede with the AG’s office, but that is problematic.
“How can I get a lawyer with no money?” she asked, explaining that she’s getting by on a pension she earned as a Disciples of Christ minister before opening the women’s shelter nearly three decades ago, and income from renting the downstairs half of her Buffalo home.
Developer Samuel Savarino, board chairman of Paradise Opportunities, confirmed that the board resolved to pay Paris and a couple of other former employees. Savarino says it would not be accurate to call it a pension or anything tied to wages, but rather a payment “in recognition of services they had provided.”
“Year after year, it was losing money,” he said of the decision to finally shut the doors of Paradise House, adding that the board felt other facilities could meet the needs of women needing help.
Savarino said he thinks there’s enough money from the sales to pay off the employees and other creditors, but it’s all tied up in the dissolution process overseen by the state. He said the board tried to expedite some payments, but was rebuffed by the attorney general.
“There are no shortcuts here,” he said of the process demanded by the state to ensure all creditors are treated properly.
So where does that leave former employees like Paris, who served as executive director? How long might it be before she gets the money due her? Where do former workers stand in the pecking order of who gets paid first when a 501(c)(3) dissolves?
She doesn’t know, and the Attorney General’s Office won’t say, with a spokesman responding by email that “we can’t discuss specific transactions while they’re in progress.”
However, attorney Diane R. Tiveron, who was just hired by the board after it determined it needed more specialized expertise, shed some light on the process. She said that in addition to presenting a dissolution plan to the AG, the plan also has to be entered in State Supreme Court.
Tiveron, managing partner at Hogan Willig, emphasized that she hasn’t even seen the paperwork yet. But of what she knows of the case so far, she doesn’t think it will pit creditors against former employees because there appear to be enough assets to pay everyone who’s owed. Anything left over, she said, would go to another organization with a similar purpose.
As for how long dissolution could take, she could not speculate, saying it depends on, among other things, how long it takes to get on the court schedule.
That leaves Paris no closer to getting the payment she calls “my entire retirement” and “all I had to live on until I die.” Once described by a Common Council member as an “old world activist” operating on “faith and community activism,” Paris said her retirement money was never put aside because Paradise House needed to use those funds to keep its programs going to help women fighting their addictions.
So now she waits, living proof of the adage that “no good deed goes unpunished.”
