The previous comments by Mr. Montas are factious. We have never operated a shelter and we have no knowledge of who this man is or anyone mentioned in his review. When we tried to call Mr. Montas, we discovered he gave out someone else's phone number and no one at that number has ever heard of him. Our mission work involves helping the poor in the Dominican Republic. We will work with Guidestar to remove this negative post.
I lived at Albany Helping Hands Shelter for three years frome 04-07 and was the first person to graduate college from Albany Helping Hands shelter. My name is Matthew Montpas my phone number is 541 670 8774 please contact me before you give any more money to the shelter as Pastor Les Bailey has retired. I have information reguarding the shelter that is very unsettleing to me to say the least. I think you will find it will also make you ill. I graduated at Linn Benton Community College in 2007 with an associate degree of applied science degree in medical assisting. With that said the accountant that worked for Albany Helping hands has resigned after 10 years at the shelter. He did a wonderful job making sure everything was transparent and easy to verify. Now the new Executive Director Paul N Barnes was hired to replace the honarable Pastor Les Bailey and has been put into the helm at Helping Hands. I started looking into Pauls resume and what I found was mis-information, and information that is inaccurate, misleading and just plain lies. He claims to be a minister licensed to marry and counsel people but he bought his license on-line and did not earn it. After finding out that I was researching his back ground he called me on the phone and threatned to have me arrested if I didn't tell him where I got my information. He wanted to shoot the messenger and not in anyway answer to the message. Paul N Barnes instead of answering the questions about his resume instead took my church priveledges away, bible study time away, and all other means of speaking with the guests that stay there at the shelter. Refusing to answer questions about the time spent in prison which he lied in his resume and said he was operating a home based business at the time he was inprisoned and why he lied on his resume. Paul chose to try to discredit me instead. I took this to the board of Helping Hands and was told that they wanted to discuss giving me back my church privledges back and not the resume. I had broken no shelter rules yet he took my privledges anyway. He was trying to silence me. I was told by a membor of the board that if I told them where I got my information that, I would have everything restored. Like I said before I had broken no rules. Pauls background is filled with things like bankruptcy, kidnaping, domestic violence and abuse. He was also sued and his buisness failed over money. The board will not address these issues and I'm putting together first hand testimonies of people who have worked for him and any that have first hand testimony about Mr. Barnes. He is also counseling guests in an anger management class and has no counseling degree. He himself yelled and screamed at me in the last two weeks right in front of his whole staff. This is not a man that should be counseling anyone. Please do not give any more money to the shelter untill your questions reguarding the new Excutive Director have been answered. I'm waiting on a back ground check for Paul N Barnes right now I paid for it myself. I will make it public along with all the testimonies to the local Demacratic Hearold news organization to make this matter public. This is so we can discuss and find out the truth about this man. Many organizations and churches and people in the community deserve to no the truth in this matter. Matthew Montpas I tried to get the board of directors to address this matter three times now and they have declined to do anything about this matter. The president of the board should resign for not dealing with this matter. This is not a compaign. I want this matter to be dicussed in the community and to get the truth and try to get to the bottom of how this could happen in the first place.
Review from Guidestar
