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Austin is about to give another $2.25 million to El Buen Samaritano, an NGO that runs its own DEI taskforce and vows to "dismantle inequities" through a "social justice framework.” The money is for rent assistance, specifically for settlements in eviction cases. With this increase, El Buen Samaritano's main city contract will have grown from $17.8 million in 2023 to $24 million. Looks like about $29 million in payment requests to the group across all its city programs so far. Rental assistance is bad policy to begin with, and the moral hazards of incentivizing people to be evicted is stupid. But even putting that aside, the council hasn’t even evaluated to see if the program works on its own terms. In August, it ordered an evaluation of these programs. But the evaluation isn’t due until February and yet the new money is going out anyway? It’s also unclear much of the $2.25 million goes to landlords and how much El Buen Samaritano keeps. Meanwhile, the NGO has boomed. Its revenue nearly tripled in one year, to $18.5 million. Its CEO's pay rose about 24%, to nearly $238,000. And an outside audit flagged a significant weakness in how it tracks money, and this was before most of the city's millions arrived. Austin is handing millions to a “social justice” NGO on the promise of a review that hasn’t happened, for a program that has never shown it keeps anyone housed. By the time the evaluation arrives in Feb, the money will be spent, and the next check will already be on the agenda.