It’s not just that he knows rules like how long you have to wait to apply for a green card. TJ understands how to heal families. The questions like “How do I bring my husband to the US?” and “How do I bring my son here?” speak of families separated by thousands of miles, and a confusing system of immigration laws. TJ answers questions and starts to clear up the mysteries. Questions like “Who can apply as a refugee?” and “How can you prove persecution?” speak of even greater troubles, perhaps.

TJ patiently answers all these questions, explaining the intricacies of immigration law, while Fadia (the BAAFC program director) translates everything. The questions don’t stop for nearly two hours.

Suddenly someone asks the question “Is it legal to raise the rent on a tenant who is over 60 years old?”  TJ looks stunned. He looks at me. We both laugh! This is not his area of expertise! I jump up and answer the question, and a stream of housing law questions begin. We cut this line of questions short, so we can take full advantage of TJ while we have him. I will come back next month to answer their housing law questions.

The women ask these questions without any apparent concern or embarrassment because of the people around them in this small, packed room, listening to their questions, and then to the answers. They all have difficult questions to ask, and there’s no judgment here. They’re all here hoping for answers.

We are extremely grateful for our partnership with TJ Mills and the ministry of Justice for Our Neighbors, a project of the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

To learn more about their program,  visit their website.

~Sandhya

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

We recently met a gentleman in Brighton Beach who was vexed by his landlord. He rented an apartment in her building that he had been sharing with his sister before she moved out.  After his sister left, the client continued paying the rent without her.  Remarkably, the landlord said he’d have to take in a man she’d found to be his roommate. She had already told the new tenant he could live there, and she didn’t understand why our client would resist.

What might seem like an obvious answer was apparently not so obvious to this landlord. We spoke to our client about the certainty of his right not  to accept strangers to live in his apartment.  Because the arguments with his landlord had gotten rather heated, we made certain he knew where to see a judge if he was illegally locked out of his apartment.  Because the landlord refused to give a lease or rent receipts, we encouraged him to gather the documents he could use to prove his lawful residence in the apartment, should the police be called to mediate.  Then, Leslie  the Director of the Russian Community Life Center, prayed for him, before he left.

We continue to be blessed to serve in a community where this kind of basic legal rights information is so needed.  Please continue to pray for a more just treatment of tenants in Brighton Beach, and for landlords to receive clear guidance about their rights and obligations in New York City.

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.

It’s a Sunday evening and Jennifer (one of our volunteers) and I (Sandhya) step off the train in Coney Island to walk toward our destination. We enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere of the boardwalk and the beach as we walk toward our destination — the Russian Community Life Center in Brighton Beach.

This new program in Brighton Beach is our first expansion of the services we at Brooklyn Jubilee have been providing at a food pantry in Park Slope, where we answer questions about housing and public assistance and provide free legal advice. The Russian Community Life Center operates a gospel-motivated community center in the heart of Brighton Beach, where Russian-speaking residents can take English and citizenship classes and find other services.

Walking into that neighborhood is a little like traveling to another city. There are shops with mysterious foods I’ve never seen, store signs in Russian, goods sold in Russian-language-only packaging, because no English is needed within these city blocks.

On this night we are offering our first open legal clinic for tenants to ask us their housing questions. The staff at the center have let their regular patrons know we’ll be here, so some of them have been anticipating our presence there.

The first person we speak with is a senior citizen who can’t get repairs — such as a fully-functioning stove — in her apartment. We speak to her by phone, because she can’t get away from work. But she knows we’re coming that night, and calls the Director Leslie McMillan on her phone so she can speak to us.

A lot of tenants in her situation face a terrible dilemma when they need repairs. She lives in a small, privately-owned building, and hasn’t had a written lease in many years. That means she’s month-to-month, and either party can end the relationship on 30 days’ notice, for no reason at all. So complaining about repairs gives her landlord lots of motivation to evict her. She’s a senior citizen and doesn’t want to move. But she’d like to have a working stove. What to do?

It’s not legal for the landlord to retaliate against her for complaining, but it’s pretty easy for him to convince a judge that he had other motivations — even if he didn’t. With Leslie interpreting, we explain her options for getting repairs, but also make sure she understands that her landlord could try to evict her for complaining. I hate giving this advice, but I am not doing her any favors by letting her get blind-sided, or by letting her feel empowered, only to be shocked when the eviction papers are taped to her door. She is extremely appreciative, effusive even, though we certainly didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. It feels odd to accept her thanks, but I’ve been here before.

A pregnant woman walks in. Through much effort, and our interpreter’s help, we discover she’s afraid her landlord will evict her once she gives birth. The landlord apparently did not expect children in this apartment. Even though her lease runs through spring, she’s worried he could kick her and her newborn baby out in the dead of winter. We assure her it’s illegal to evict tenants for having children in New York City, and that she’ll get to live out her lease with her baby, although she may have to move if he doesn’t want to renew her lease. She is also very appreciative of the advice, advice that seems so basic to me. I am mildly shocked at how little she understands of her most basic protections in NYC. We give her contact information for the city Human Rights Commission, in case she runs into trouble after the baby’s born.

These are the strange joys of a justice ministry like Brooklyn Jubilee. We speak to people who are in the dark, and looking for a guide. And even when the torch lights up an unfortunate path, they’re usually still grateful for directions.