I met a couple of gentlemen recently who are active members of Old First Reformed Church, but have no stable home to sleep in each night. They’ve been waiting for Section 8 housing to come through for over  a year now, and their efforts to connect to city services (with lots of loving help from the Old First pastor Meeter and other members) have so far been unsuccessful.  I spoke with them, talked to them about some of the options they may not have considered, like public housing, so they put in a public housing application, but that could also be many years of waiting, even for two homeless gentlemen.

Part of the problem is the city policy of distinguishing between “street homeless” and people like these two fellows I met, who manage to keep off the streets each night but have no permanent place to stay. For example, one fellow in the Slope raises enough money each day panhandling so he can buy a bed night by night in a rooming house. It’s not his apartment. He can’t stay there during the day or keep things. He just has a place to sleep at night. If he’s not found on the street, city “outreach teams” won’t assist him. His only other option is to take himself to central intake in mid-town Manhattan, to enter the “Wheel” of the city shelter system.

Many homeless persons fear the shelter system (not unreasonably) for safety concerns. It’s also an exhausting process, requiring them to  shuttle around the city from central intake to a remote shelter placement and back, often in the wee hours of the morning.

This week, Reverend Meeter, Brian Steadman, members of Old First, and I met with city council members Brad Lander and Steve Levin to talk about our concerns for the needs of the homeless in general, and for the two homeless gentlemen attending Old First in particular. The council members were kind and empathetic, and promised to look into our concerns. Stay tuned…

~Sandhya

Habitat for Humanity has built several affordable housing developments in NYC. These buildings present the opportunity of a life time that many of us only dream about – homeownership in NYC. Best of all, they present that opportunity to families who might otherwise never be able to buy because of their income.

In fact, although they have recently built a beautiful, LEED-certified condo complex in East New York, Habitat cannot find enough qualified applicants to purchase these apartments. Stop and digest that for a moment. In New York City, where 70% of the residents are tenants, many of whom dream of homeownership but can’t pull together a 20-30% down payment, these gorgeous homes are sitting vacant. Now consider that the down payment on the Habitat homes is only ONE PERCENT, and the fixed-rate 30-year mortgage is only TWO PERCENT. So why do these condos sit empty?

Not everyone qualifies for the program. The family income must be within their guidelines. The applicant must have a good credit score, at least 620 or up. They must be willing to put in hundreds of hours of “sweat equity,” meaning actual physical labor in the construction of other homes, before they can purchase their own.  

So, Habitat can’t actually find enough qualified applicants to purchase the homes. Sometimes a good candidate is zooming along in the process, and they get caught in a credit scam, and their credit score goes bust. Sometimes people are working their way towards homeownership, and they lose their job and thus fall out side the income guidelines.

Here’s where we can help. Habitat wants to goes into the community to talk to people about their homeownership program, and encourage folks who might qualify to apply. And to foster a tenant population with higher credit scores, Habitat lectures in the community about consumer scams and other consumer traps that can ultimately ruin your credit score. They make these presentations when the can, but are always looking for more opportunities to speak to an audience. They don’t have enough resources to promote these events themselves to generate a good crowd, and many of the organization that might want to sponsor it won’t have those resources either. 

Could you be the answer? Could you help Habitat? It’s not as complicated as it might seem. I’m pretty confident we could find the venues for at least five presentations right away, and schedule them.  But Brooklyn Jubilee doesn’t have the staff to do extensive outreach for these events. It takes time, and with limited staff, we couldn’t do an effective job on our own. Volunteers could help  out by spending time on-line finding names of churches, businesses, etc. that might promote a Habitat lecture. Other volunteers could help us mail letters to those groups, or give them a call, or take them a flier about the event. 

No, it’s not as sexy as wielding a hammer for them. But it’s real help. Simple help. Help that Habitat wants and needs to effectively promote low-income home ownership.  Do you share that vision? Can you get involved?

This is David. We met him at the St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church Helping Hands food pantry in January. We meet lots of folks like him who are looking for better housing options than they have now. Most are trying to avoid the high rents of Park Slope.  David was different. David was trying to escape pain. David walks with a cane, and every time he has to walk up and down the stairs to his walk up apartment, he experiences pain. Imagine for a minute living with that kind of burden. Imagine thinking twice before you go to the grocery store, or go to see a friend, because you need to limit the pain you live with every day.  David had put himself on the waiting list for public housing, but he’d been waiting a long time with no help from there.  We explained to David that the process is strict, and that the only way to speed up the waiting is to get a higher priority classification for his medical needs. We described the kinds of documentation he’d need to convince the housing authority he deserves a higher priority on the waiting list.  And David ran with our advice. He got letters from his doctor, and from his friends at St. Augustine RCC (”I was baptized here!”). Last month, he got his letter, proudly shown in this photo, telling him he was getting an apartment that would not require him to walk up stairs anymore. David, who couldn’t stop smiling, very kindly brought the letter to us at the pantry so we could share in his joy.  We’re so happy for him! Many thanks to David for letting us share his wonderful story.

Photo by Ji Eun Kim

If you’re at all familiar with Brooklyn, you probably know Park Slope as the increasingly yuppie and stroller filled community that has boasted celebrity residents like Jennifer Connelly and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

But as a Brooklyn poverty lawyer, I (Sandhya) knew this assumption about Park Slope was wrong. I had clients in and around Park Slope, and knew the unseen needs of our neighbors around us. I knew the stories of long-time senior citizen residents who were being evicted from the only homes they’d lived in for decades, because rising property values simply made it too profitable for landlords NOT to sell their buildings. I had heard the stories of tenants, living in horrible conditions, who couldn’t get repairs from landlords because these unscrupulous owners were hoping that tenants with regulated rent would give up and leave, making room for new tenants who would pay market rate and inflated rents.

Mindful that we had a lot to learn about our new community, Brooklyn Presbyterian Church — which was then a network of churches in Brooklyn, the first of which was Park Slope Presbyterian Church — conducted a needs assessment of Park Slope.

In the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus taught the importance of serving our neighbors in need. But how can we serve our neighbors if we’ve never spoken to them? How can we serve our neighbors if we’ve never asked them what they need? Too often charities are formed without asking these basic questions. As a result, precious resources may be directed to the squeaky wheel of a community, rather than its greatest needs. The two-year study was fairly comprehensive, exploring many aspects of physical “felt” needs.

The needs assessment revealed many key areas of need, including housing, and access to food. These were not the only needs we found, but some of the few where our available resources could be mobilized to have an immediate impact. We later formed a partnership with the Fifth Avenue Committee, an affordable housing developer and social service group with 30 years’ experience in serving low-income residents in Park Slope and beyond.

At the food pantry, we see residents from the public housing developments, a homeless shelter, supportive housing for the disabled, and subsidized housing developments, all of which are located within walking distance of the food pantry in Park Slope. Some of our volunteers have discovered for the first time that serious poverty exists in Park Slope, even though they had never recognized it before. As low-income residents are increasingly forced to leave Park Slope due to high rents, Brooklyn Jubilee has begun to serve in other neighborhoods further in to Brooklyn, including Brighton Beach and Bay Ridge. But we will continue to serve in Park Slope as long as low-income residents continue to stay in their community.