We have an amazing lineup of local New York City artists — many of whom are based in Brooklyn — who have generously donated artwork for our fundraising auction this Saturday. Get a taste of what will be up for auction by visiting some of their websites below. All proceeds from the sale of work will go directly to benefit Brooklyn Jubilee.

Tickets are still available here.

Abraham Storer   /   www.abrahamstorer.com

Christopher Boswell   /   www.boswellfineart.com

Chris Segedy   /   www.chrissegedyart.com

Christy Hayner

Faith Evans-Sills   /   www.faithevanssills.com

Frank Sills   /   www.francissills.com

Kristin Brenneman Eno   /   www.k-b-e.net

Malathip Kriheli   /   www.ecopatterns.com

Maria Fee

Megan Prince   /   www.megprince.com

Michael Boestch

Michelle Han   /   www.michellehan.com

Miriam West   /   www.loopyludesigns.com

Sandhya Reju Boyd   /   www.srboydphotography.com

Sean Boyd

~Michelle

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

There’s really no other way to describe it. After nearly four years of visiting the Helping Hands food pantry every month, to answer questions about food stamps, housing and anything else under the sun we might be asked, I’ve been ousted by two Brooklyn Jubilee volunteers.

Last month, when I appeared at the pantry to serve with the Brooklyn Jubilee volunteers, both Marcey and Katie asked me, “Why are you here?”

I was not off-put by their declaration of my dispensability. I was thrilled! What followed was a thoughtful, and exciting discussion about their commitment to serve the patrons of the Helping Hands food pantry every month, and to work closely with me and Jackie (our Volunteer Coordinator) as they become Site Leaders in Park Slope.

The program model has always envisioned committed volunteers taking over leadership of established sites where we serve, freeing program staff for the challenging work of breaking new ground elsewhere in Brooklyn.  And yet, it is understandably very difficult for most people to make the time to volunteer in any capacity, let alone to make the profound commitment to lead some portion of any ministry on a volunteer basis. What a great joy it is to see their faithfulness to serve their neighbors! And what a blessing to me to have a Saturday off!

Please be praying for Marcey and Katie as they  weave this new commitment into the fabric of their very full lives and busy legal careers, for their sustained joy and enthusiasm in this ministry.

~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

~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.

Habitat for Humanity is now sponsoring a series of talks on the Refund Anticipation Loan. They have some startling statistics. In 2004, New Yorkers lost more than $92 million of their refunds and credits through Refund Anticipation Loans. Approximately 77% of all New Yorkers who received a RAL were low-income. In many of the poorest NYC neighborhoods, and estimated 1 out of every 4 taxpayers received a RAL.

Habitat-NYC will provide information about the loans, as well as smart tax strategies for tax savings and free tax preparation sites.

Brooklyn Jubilee is assisting Habitat by trying to get the word out. We’re looking for locations to sponsor the talks by Habitat, and hoping to help some New Yorkers save their hard-earned money. If you know of any churches or non-profits we could approach to sponsor a talk, please contact Sandhya at brooklynjubilee@brooklynjubilee.org.

Sandhya teaches tenant's rights at the Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center

This year, we began serving at the Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center in Bay Ridge. The center offers English language classes and help with citizenship tests for Arab-speaking, predominantly Muslim women. During our last class in Bay Ridge, teaching this lovely group of Arab-American women about tenant’s rights in NYC, a young high school girl used my camera to take a few photographs for me. Understanding there were certain cultural sensitivities, I assured the women that we wouldn’t show their faces to anyone, only the backs of their heads. Fadia, the director of the program, urged me to keep my word. “If their family members see them, they could come and kill them.” She was not joking. And I believed her.  Then it really began to sink in to me, what a remarkable community Fadia has created for my new Muslim friends.

Fadia Farag, Exec. Director of the Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center, with Sandhya after class

In a world where letting your face be seen, even by accident, could lead to your death, how carefully must you consider who you are willing to trust?  And yet, Fadia’s center attracts many Muslim women every week to learn English  and receive study help for their citizenship tests. They freely talk with Fadia, and others who like me who are not Muslim, welcoming our friendship and counsel. I don’t believe I’ve ever been covered with kisses after a training until the first time I went to visit the center. One woman insisted I take her scarf as a gift! So when I explained that their pictures were being taken, and we would protect them from exposure, not one woman left. More than anything, it seems that the linguistic isolation, rather than cultural, has created barriers around them, barriers to their knowledge about the law. They are eager to learn this year as we visit on a monthly basis.  We are priviledged to have their trust, to bring other Brooklyn Jubilee volunteers to teach about housing and other areas of the law.

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.