Merced nonprofit CEO makes $500,000. The last local housing project was built seven years ago

The median household income in Merced County is $53,672. By comparison, California’s median household income is $73,235.

So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Merced County is one of the poorer places in the state.

Nor does it take much expertise to realize that if someone could earn an annual income of more than $500,000 while leading a Merced-based nonprofit, that would be an amazing deal.

In fact, someone does. Her name is Christina Alley. She’s probably unknown to most of the public, and the nonprofit organization that she leads, the Central Valley Coalition for Affordable Housing, is equally under the radar.

Its mission is to help get affordable housing built, a critical need in Merced County, given the low incomes that many people earn.

No affordable housing projects have been completed in Merced — the nonprofit’s home base — since 2014.

This story was unearthed by Abbie Lauten-Scrivner of the Merced Sun-Star.

The story begged the question: How come Alley makes so much?

And why does the nonprofit not have a functioning website? That is such a basic of doing business in 2021, the lack of one is appalling.

To be fair, no one has brought any allegations of misdeeds against Alley or the organization. But no matter the justification, Alley’s pay is so excessive it raises many troubling questions.

In Sacramento and cities across California, affordable housing is badly needed and yet in short supply. The lack of affordable housing is a key component of the homelessness crisis. The high cost of affordable housing is well known.

So when the CEO of an affordable housing non-profit is making a half million dollars a year in one of California’s poorest counties, it’s not just a Merced story or a Sacramento story. It’s a California story.

The nonprofit that Alley leads helps build and manage housing developments around the state for low-income, disabled and senior residents. The organization is of modest size, with just over 20 employees. It reported $7.6 million in revenue and $4.6 million in total expenses in 2019.

Alley took home salary and benefits worth more than $570,000 that year, which represented 12% of the nonprofit’s expenses. Put another way, her pay and benefits were 10 times higher than Merced County’s median household income.

The new chancellor of UC Merced, in charge of educating 9,000 students, earns $425,000 annually. Merced County’s district attorney is paid $333,000; the head of the county’s food bank gets $86,923.

Lauten-Scrivner found that the CEO of the Bridge Housing Corp. in San Francisco earned $727,000 in 2019. But that salary was just 2% of the corporation’s expenses.

Lauten-Scrivner also discovered that Alley’s pay is higher than both the average and maximum compensation found among 112 nonprofits with similar operating budgets as the Central Valley Coalition for Affordable Housing.

The roughly 280 projects Alley oversees and the 60 to 80 hours worked on a regular week are key factors in deciding her salary, said board president Alan Jenkins. “It may look really high for Merced County, but she’s excellent at what she does,” he said. “This is a really unique job.” Jenkins has been at the helm of the board for 32 years

Fair enough, but Alley would not explain to Lauten-Scrivner the role of state and federal tax credits — essentially taxpayer funds — in financing the nonprofit’s projects. So Jim Costa, Merced County’s congressman, and state Assemblyman Adam Gray, who is from Merced, should ask Alley to be more transparent and open the books for review.

The entire state Legislature should be asking questions about this outrageous story.