Help Us Decide: Housing Plus NYC May Be A Future Old First Partner

We’re in the process of determining whether Old First should partner with a new (to us) organization called Housing Plus.

The non-profit, formed in 2002, works to address the lack of housing and services for underserved, marginalized women in New York City.

Housing Plus founder and executive director Rita Zimmer helps provide transitional and permanent housing for nearly 250 women and children every year. The program reaches across seven housing sites in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens; its goal is to create opportunites and second chances for women who would often are inducted into the criminal justice system with little hope of a better life.

On Sunday, May 19, Rita spoke with us regarding the consequences of poverty for women at the Rose M. Singer Center, which is the women’s jail on Rikers Island. Many of these inmates are being detained simply because they are homeless and poor. The effects of incarceration, along with poverty, homelessness, abuse, addiction and trauma, have a devastating effect on these women, as well as their families and the city itself. Housing Plus and its partners is proposing a “Beyond Rosie’s” campaign to help these women overcome such limiting and life-threatening obstacles. The organization’s other objective: to reimagine the criminal justice system for women and help make it a reality.

One of Housing Plus’ action plans is to expedite the closure of the Rose M. Singer Center by 2020. To do this, she and her partners have created a new non-profit, Women’s Community Justice Association, which has become home to the Beyond Rosie’s campaign to ensure a financial and programmatic commitment to the cause.

Here are just a few of the ways that Housing Plus addresses the transition for women facing homelessness:

• Provide housing so they can create real homes
• Help them get suitable jobs
• Help them address the traumatic events that may have caused their homelessness: chronic abuse, drug addiction, incarceration, and for female veterans, physical disabilities and emotional suffering.

The goal: to help build a life of stability by navigating structural barriers when re-entering the community following imprisonment. In particular, these include public benefit/entitlement services, the foster care system, and seeking living-wage employment.

Click here to learn more about Housing Plus.

Have an opinion on Old First helping this cause? Email us or contact one of our deacons.