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The labor union that represents 205 staff at Home Forward says it has “no confidence or trust in leadership” of the agency after WW reported on CEO Ivory Mathews’ travel spending pattern over the past three years.
AFSCME Local 3135 president Jennifer McMillan says most of the union’s members were “completely blindsided” by Mathews’ travel—and her annual salary, which this year is $342,000. “Employees are too busy trying to pay basic bills just to survive to even dream of what it would be like to use company funds to go to Hawaii with our families and play on the beach,” she says.
Home Forward is the city of Portland’s housing authority. It owns 7,000 affordable apartment units across Multnomah County and provides rent assistance vouchers to more than 12,000 low-income Portlanders. But as WW has detailed in recent months, it’s struggled to fill empty units in a timely manner and failed to keep illegal drug markets out of apartment buildings, all while its housing portfolio has inched closer and closer to financial distress.
The union’s sharp remarks come in response to last week’s findings that Mathews spent more than $100,000 on travel to housing conferences and networking events between 2023 and 2025. During much of 2024 and 2025, Mathews campaigned for a leadership position at the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, the group hosting most of the conferences she attended across the country. At a number of conferences she set up a campaign booth and distributed glossy flyers, pins picturing her face, and handmade earrings to passersby.
One of Mathews’ trips stood out both for its purpose and for its costs: In October 2024, Mathews spent seven days in Hawaii at a cost of $7,269. Mathews says she was there to attend a conference on captive insurance, a type of self-insurance the agency uses. But images on social media show the trip was also one of leisure: Hundreds of photos Mathews posted showed her and family members horseback riding, taking tours of local farms, lounging on the beach, and visiting sand dunes.
“The lack of response to the allegations of excessive spending on extravagant travel was a tipping point, and we absolutely have no confidence or trust in leadership,” AFSCME’s McMillan said in a statement to WW. “In times of budgetary concern, it’s important to exhibit constraint and be good stewards of taxpayer funds.”
WW has since learned that three other top staff at Home Forward—including Kandy Sage, the agency’s chief financial officer—attended the Hawaii insurance conference since 2022. Receipts provided to WW late last week from seven trips show that Home Forward reimbursed staff about $24,000 total for travel expenses across all trips.
At the first Home Forward board of commissioners meeting following the travel revelations, on Tuesday evening, board members took turns defending Mathews’ salary, travel expenses and leadership in general, with some casting WW’s stories as lacking nuance and context.
“The fact that she travels a significant amount during the year—there was a lot of reporting on 45 days average, and that’s coming in at just $30,000 a year—that’s not out of whack or inconsistent with a reasonable amount of travel costs," said chair emeritus Damien Hall.
Board chair Matthew Gebhardt apologized to staff for the “narrative” that’s been built about Home Forward, but later said that it’s “clear that the organization and board have hard work to do...we need to be sure that we’re acknowledging, learning the lessons, and working to be better when we identify problems.” He also gently suggested that Mathews might “scale back” her national travels and spend more time locally.
During her five-minute remarks, Mathews did not directly address any of her travel habits or expenditures, nor did she say specifically what she was referring to when promising that the agency would be more accountable and transparent and work toward “regaining public trust.”
“We’re committed to making sure that we address those concerns that have been brought forth to us,” Mathews said. “We’re committed to taking all of those comments and making sure that we show up to provide the information that people want information about, in a very transparent way.”
But Home Forward union members who offered public comments to the board had no difficulty naming the problem.
Longtime Home Forward staffer and AFSCME member Brad Gerow said Mathews’ $220 checked baggage receipts, both to and from certain destinations, would cost two days’ salary for him and some of his peers. “Does the board believe this represents sound judgment of a leader?” he asked.
McMillan, the union president, said union members were “absolutely shocked to learn from the media how much frivolous spending has happened.” She added: “Would the agency be in the media like we are if there was integrity on display? Absolutely no one has taken accountability. Trust has been destroyed, and I’m not sure at this point if there’s any coming back from that.”
Vali Griffin, a longtime Home Forward employee, said she lives paycheck to paycheck and has never received more than a 5% annual raise, while Mathews in just three years saw a 59% pay hike. “When I’m seeing these 59% increases while we barely get more than 5%, it’s very disheartening. Someone truly needs to look into it, and there needs to be some type of investigation,” Griffin said.
The agency’s board of commissioners has stood by Mathews’ travel habits, as has Mathews, with both saying she has applied lessons learned at the conferences to Home Forward. Gebhardt has previously said the board has “full confidence” in Mathews’ leadership and that “her work at the national level helps position Home Forward to better navigate” the challenges that affordable housing providers face.
The union says that claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
“I can’t point to a single lesson learned or new practice from any of these conferences,” McMillan tells WW. “Now the agency is somehow finding funds for a third-party assessment instead of using any best practice that might have been learned.”
(McMillan is referring to the agency’s pledge last week—announced just hours before WW published the story about Mathews’ travel—to bring in an independent contractor to assess the agency’s performance. The agency also promised a public-facing dashboard to track key metrics, like apartment occupancy.)
Last year, the union agreed during bargaining to a 40-hour furlough requirement for all Home Forward staff—a cost-saving measure as the agency looked down the barrel at a budget deficit. (That gap recently shrank from an estimated $30 million to $13.8 million.) The union says the furlough requirement has caused great hardship to some Home Forward staff, and that seeing Mathews’ travel expenses rubs salt in the wound.
“Home Forward gave [union members] no choice but to take all 40 hours at once, sometimes losing half their paycheck,“ McMillan tells WW. ”Then, when we find out that travel expenses and the car allowance for just one of the executives is more than many people make annually, it’s disheartening.”
A spokesperson for Mayor Keith Wilson told WW that the mayor is monitoring Home Forward closely given how “disturbed” he is by the vacancy rates, and suggested that he was unhappy with Mathews’ travel.
“Portlanders urgently need stable housing, and we need leadership that can deliver results,” spokesman Cody Bowman said. “The mayor expects public agencies to use taxpayer and ratepayer dollars responsibly and to stay focused on their core responsibilities. He will continue to monitor Home Forward’s performance closely and expects clear, measurable improvement.”
