New York City – The city has yanked contracts to four nonprofit groups whose grants were frozen in April as part of a broader investigation into the City Council’s slush-fund scandal.
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Among the organizations rejected for council funding is the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, a well-respected nonprofit that was given $600,000 from the council in fiscal year 2008.
The Metropolitan Council is losing a $14,000 grant that had earlier been approved by the city Department for the Aging
The Metropolitan Council could not be reached due to the Jewish holiday Shavuot.
What a shame. They do such amazing things for the community. How does the Mayor not see this?
please explain the great things they do besides willie and his cronuies getting fat salaries in the high hundred thousands besides the perks such as cars insurances etc taht are buried as regular expenses
I’m not sure why the comment I just typed was deleted but I’ll try it again.
Joseph, if you’d bother to do some research you will notice that Met Council is consistently ranked highest among non profits in the United States. There numbers are usually around 98% of total cash going to those in need which is a number that is unheard of in the non-profit sector.
The fact that Met Council is getting such trouble is simply due to the fact that the Mayor of New York City is taking a slap at Shelly Silver. It’s that simple. Talk to anyone in politics and they will echo what I said.
Why doesn’t Bloomberg focus on the City Council writing grants to groups that don’t really exist rather than a group that actually does good.
B”H this self hating Jew will be out of office soon.
WHY WE DONT ASK MET COUNCIL TO OPEN THEIR BOOKS…SEE HOW MONIES ARE SPENT
There are people on the met making a quarter of million dollars in salary. If they think they’re worth that much, let them go work in the private sector. I’m sure they could find someone that would be very happy to manage the place for 80K and the rest would go to the people it’s supposed to help. The Place was on the up and up years ago when it was run by Mrs. W. She was forced out of the organization that she built in exchange for bureaucrats that milk the place. There are people who aren’t even on the 990s because there is a part of the grant that doesn’t even get listed. Put Mrs. W. back and the place will get straightened out.
information on http://www.guidestar.org
What concerned member says is right onthe money. Silver and Bloomberg dont see eye to eye so Bloomberg has taken every possible step to go after Silver including messing up his local neighborhood with bike lanes that have taken away a second car lane on Grand Street which is always backed up with W Bridge traffic. He now goes after Met Council who he praises in public. Taking money from programs that benefit the senior citizens. Shame on him. He will tell you he is a senior citizen too, but someone explain to me what he can possibly know about the life of a senior on a fixed income who goes to a lunch club to get his/her best meal of the day.
All I can say is his bhavior disgusts me .
Met Council Executive Director is worth whatever his salary is. You cant just take someone that does not have all the experience the ED does and expect them to run a place the size of Met Council. It is no longer the size it was 15 years ago. It has increased tremendously. The ED of Met Council is a hard working honest man and very well respected . Those who speak badly of him do so from either ignorance or jealousy.
If i had to guess i would say your post from last night didnt get published because youre a moron who doesnt know his rear end from his face.
The money at met councel goes to all the right places. how do i know because i am one of the right places it has gone to and i take it very personally when a bunch of no nothings are bad mouthing the organization and the people who basically saved my life and my family.
If you have an issue instead of bashing others why dont you try and go do some good on your own. Bashing the met council wont help you it only makes you look like a fool.
Joseph, you must be a disgruntled employee; put down the crack pipe and get another job. Noach, the books are open; that’s how you get grants – you have to show how the money is spent. Stop smoking crack with Joseph.
I’ve worked at many non-profits and it is an endless, thankless, tiresome job with little pay; but it is rewarding to help others as Met Council does.
The Mayor needs to put his attitude behind and let Met Council do what it does best – help impoverished New Yorkers.
Signed,
A Non-Crack Head
Poverty on the rise
Fewer donations hamper efforts by kosher food programs to assist the poor
B Y L I S A S C H I F F M A N
A record number of Jews in the New York Metropolitan area were in need of assistance over the 2008 Pesach holiday — a group which included elderly people as well as a growing population of younger Jews who,impacted by the surging prices of food, fuel, and housing,are in desperate straits.
This year, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish
Poverty — a not-for-profit organization representing grass roots Jewish Community Councils and citywide and national Jewish organizations — distributed 1.3 million pounds of kosher for Passover food to 60,000 households in New York City, exceeding last year’s number by
10,000 families. Agencies like Keren Aniyim and Tomchei Shabbos also served thousands. An estimated total of 80,000 households needed some form of assistance.
Kosher food programs in and around the Five Towns
have been hit hard by the economic downturn.
“We definitely have an increased demand,” said
Jeanette Lamm, director of the local branch of Tomchei Shabbos, based in Far Rockaway, which collects and distributes weekly Shabbos and holiday food packages to Jewish families in the Five Towns, Far Rockaway and surrounding
areas.
“The economy is hard right now,” Mrs. Lamm told
The Jewish Star. “I have seen a greater need across the board — more families, more people. Our expenses have gone up tremendously due to volume and prices of things.”
Ari Schonbrun of Cedarhurst, a longtime volunteer
responsible for coordinating Tomchei Shabbos’s Pesach delivery program, estimated that the number of families receiving food packages increased this year from 165 to 190. “Families found themselves in a situation where the husband loses his job, or a child is born and they had just been getting by and now they can’t make it,” Mr. Schonbrun told The Jewish Star. “You could be middle class and all of a sudden you find yourself saying ‘Hey, I can’t make ends meet.’ Just because we live in the Five Towns doesn’t mean we’re immune.”
At the JCC of The Greater Five Towns, which runs a kosher dry foods pantry, Executive Director Rina Shkolnik has observed an increase in the
number of families seeking assistance. “We definitely see an increased need from young families to older adults,” she said.
The JCC food pantry assists around 125 families each month by providing kosher, non-perishable
food. The families seeking assistance run the gamut from single parents to the elderly who
live on social security, to households in which the primary breadwinner has lost his or her
job.“We are seeing more people not being able to make ends meet because of the economic situation — people who can’t pay their rent or mortgage,” said Harvey Gordon, executive director of the Jewish Community Council of the Rockaway Peninsula,(JCCRP), an affiliate of The Metropolitan Council consisting of over 40 Jewish charitable groups servicing the Rockaway
Peninsula.“The percentage of income going towards rent has risen dramatically,” Mr. Gordon reported. “One third of a person’s income used to be used for housing. That is no longer true
— it’s now more than 50 percent.”
In addition to rising food, fuel and housing costs, Mr. Gordon said, another factor impacting
Orthodox families is the steep price of tuition for Jewish Day Schools and Yeshivas.
While the cost of living has risen dramatically, he adds, salaries have not kept pace. He is now
seeing a greater number of young families needing assistance than ever before.
The economic downturn,rising food prices, and a widespread decrease in donations have thrust many food pantries into crisis mode.
“People are giving less —they’re scared to give as much because they don’t know what the future is for themselves,” Mr. Gordon said.
“People are living in real poverty,” cautioned William Rapfogel, executive director of The Metropolitan Council of New York. “The working poor and the near poor have very little resources — they don’t qualify for benefits such as the Federal Food Stamp program, Medicaid,
or Section A benefits. Spending 75 percent of their income for food and rent, there is little left for clothing or other necessities.”
For struggling Orthodox families, the higher cost of kosher food only compounds their difficulties.
“In the New York Metropolitan area, we are seeing middle class families who are not able to make ends meet come to our food pantry warehouse in
Canarsie, Brooklyn because they are embarrassed to go to the local food pantry,” Mr. Rapfogel
continued. “People are hurting everywhere, and the Jewish community has to go out of its way to help. There are tens of thousands of people in the New York Metropolitan area not below the poverty level but they are in need.”