by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

March 19, 2009

The Jewish Family Service of MetroWest has been awarded a $190,000 federal grant for a homelessness prevention program.

The funds — included in the $410 billion Omnibus Spending Bill President Obama signed into law on March 11 — will enable the agency’s case management unit to expand its services to an increasing number of clients who risk losing their homes in both inner-city areas and the suburban towns of Essex County.

One half of JFS’ homeless clients are people of color from inner cities, said agency executive director Reuben Rotman. The other half are “Jewish people from the suburbs who are homeless or on the verge of homelessness.”

“We’ve had people walk in with an eviction notice,” said Rotman. “We’ve had people who could be three months away from an eviction notice. We’ve had people who have had to leave housing because their behaviors were unstable. And we have people who are in housing but can’t keep a job and have a lot of difficulties with relationships. They lead lives that are unstable. We stabilize their crisis.”

The earmark for JFS was shepherded into law by New Jersey’s Democratic U.S. senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, along with Democratic House members Donald Payne (Dist. 10) and Bill Pascrell (Dist. 8).

Diane Klein, associate director of planning and allocations at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, and Lori Price Abrams, director of the MetroWest Community Relations Committee, collaborated in the effort to win the funding (see sidebar).

Currently the JFS case management unit, which was formed two years ago with seed funds from the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, deals with an array of challenges. Some of its clients are mentally ill, some are victims of the current economic crisis, and some are both.

‘Stronger now’

The unit’s original mission was to assist people with mental and emotional problems — many of whom have trouble finding work and affordable housing.

“But now we need to extend our services so we can work with others as well,” said Rotman.

He said that with the grant money, the agency will be able to serve another 100 clients by expanding case management services.

“Often our clients are unable to pay their bills, unable to pay their rent, unable to buy medication, and unable to pay their medical bills,” said Betty Jampel, coordinator of case management services at JFS. “We provide the funding to stabilize them in the short term, then help them to apply for benefits and entitlements and stabilize them for the future.”

Rotman said the case management unit represented “very strong foresight” on the part of JFS.

“Had the case management unit not been in place when this recession hit, we would not have been as well-positioned as we are today to respond to the families coming in now who are impacted by the economic crisis.

“We are so much stronger now because of that.”

But, Jampel predicted, “things will absolutely get worse before they get better. Now we are seeing clients come in several months after going into foreclosure. They are still living in their homes and moving toward eviction. In the next few months, it is going to take a lot of concrete planning to keep them in their homes.”

Jampel has worked with both inner-city clients and members of a suburban synagogue.

“The Jewish community — as tight as it is — we are not used to leaning on each other,” she said. “Yes, in the synagogue there is a certain amount of community. But dealing with the economic issues, we’ve been very private, and I think that is going to need to change. The whole mentality of how we use the community to help us is going to have to change,” she said.

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Finding favor in halls of Congress

THE $190,000 GRANT to the Jewish Family Service of MetroWest is part of the $7.3 million in the Omnibus Spending Bill allocated to Jewish agencies across the nation.

Spearheading the local drive for inclusion were Lori Price Abrams, director of the MetroWest Community Relations Committee, and Diane Klein, associate director of planning and allocations at UJC MetroWest.

The Planning Department indentified mental illness services as among unmet communal priorities and helped to craft the pitch. CRC acted as an advocate for JFS with federal lawmakers.

“There was a need for more homeless services, and local hospitals have been closing centers and leaving clients without services,” Klein said. “Our agencies, particularly JFS, were becoming challenged to serve these people. Its case management unit was being formed at the time we began thinking about how we could address the issue through an earmark.”

The grant comes as politicians on both sides of the aisle call for a reform of the system of earmarks — direct expenditures that critics say allow members of Congress to direct unfair rewards to allies and campaign contributors. President Obama has said earmarks fund many worthy projects, but called for transparency in the process.

“Obviously some requests are laughable. But ours was not for a bridge to nowhere,” said Price Abrams in reference to the infamous $398 million project that would have benefited only the residents of a sparsely populated Alaskan town.

“We are very proud of our projects and our members are very proud of them,” Price Abrams said. “What we are doing are demonstrations of cost-saving innovations that might be replicated. This is the kind of innovation that might be modeled elsewhere.”

Using case management to streamline services to the potentially homeless “found favor in the halls of Congress,” said Price Abrams. “The mental illness factor makes people unwilling or unable to be easily helped through normal channels. Without the right kind of services, it can be devastating.

“The people who are one mortgage payment or one rent payment away from being homeless are even more challenged in this economic climate. Our funding couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Klein.

“It was a great partnership between the planning department, the CRC, and the JFS to bring money into our system that was not in the usual way,” said the CRC director. “We were able to do more through partnership than we could do alone, and that was the most exciting thing about it.”

— ROBERT WIENER

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