Helping New Yorkers Weather the Storm

A Selfhelp Legal Advocate visits the home of an 86-year-old client who lives in Brooklyn. Selfhelp was able to get her full-time home care.

With Wall Street at the epicenter of the economic crisis, it’s hard to find anyone in New York City who does not feel the pain. But in these tough times, it’s more important than ever to help those who are hit the hardest and have no safety net.

As we did after September 11th, The Trust is working to balance immediate and urgent needs with our long-term goals—public education reform, job creation and training, and universal health coverage among them. Grants in early 2009 are helping New Yorkers weather the storm by making sure that the most effective City nonprofits—who also are hurting financially—can continue to help our neediest neighbors get food, shelter, and public benefits.

We, too, are feeling the impact of the market collapse. But with the generosity of past donors who set up endowed funds with us, the big hearts of our current donors, and careful management, we will maintain our commitment to solving today’s problems and plan for a more promising tomorrow.

When You’re Forced to Make the Toughest Choices

Thousands of elders in New York City are facing hard times because of declining retirement income brought on by the financial crisis. Paying for medications and health care is becoming particularly difficult, especially for elders with chronic health problems. Deciding whether to fill a prescription or buy groceries is a choice no senior citizen should ever have to make. Almost all elders are eligible for Medicare, and those who become poor because of chronic illness are eligible for Medicaid.

But these programs have complicated regulations and few elders understand them. And with State budget cuts, it may become harder for disabled elders to receive Medicaid-funded home care. With a $100,000 grant, Selfhelp Community Services will continue its hotline, staffed by lawyers and paralegals who can coach social workers, elders, and caregivers to navigate these bureaucracies. When problems are too complicated for elders to solve on their own, the organization assigns lawyers to represent them; Selfhelp expects to help at least 250 elders who have been denied Medicaid or Medicare home care benefits, or who have problems getting prescription drug subsidies. In addition to helping individuals, the organization will conduct 40 training sessions for 1,500 staff members of groups serving seniors, and run 20 educational sessions for at least 700 elders.

When Your Social Security Checks are Seized by a Creditor

Credit cards with high interest rates and mounting penalties have been aggressively marketed to poor people across the country. When a job is lost or a health problem hits, credit card debt can mount quickly, leaving people like Queens resident Ms. Z, a disabled 57-year-old, in the lurch. Before she was able to get disability benefits, Ms. Z survived by charging necessities to her credit cards while she was recovering from successive strokes. Then she started getting several calls a day from collectors and soon her bank account was frozen. She didn’t know she was being sued and never received a notice to go to court.

Ms. Z is not alone. Collection agencies have bought up millions in credit card debt and are using unscrupulous and often illegal methods to take these collection cases to court and seize assets. The courts are overwhelmed with cases filed with errors, such as wrong names and addresses. As a result, New Yorkers can find their pension payments and Social Security checks suspended and not even know they had been sued.

The Legal Aid Society was able to help Ms. Z get the case dropped by proving to the courts that her bank account only contained exempt Social Security Disability funds. With a grant of $75,000, Legal Aid’s Consumer Rights Law Project will help protect more Queens residents from abusive debt collectors. Focusing on cases that have potential to set precedents to protect all consumers, the project will represent at least 40 low-income individuals keep creditors out of their bank accounts.

When You Can’t Find a Job That Supports Your Family

With fabled Wall Street institutions dissolving into thin air and even the most formidable corporations on shaky ground, thousands of New Yorkers are being laid off and facing a tough job market. The State comptroller estimates that New York City could lose 175,000 jobs over the next two years in a substantial reordering of our economy. But as some jobs disappear, others emerge, and the challenge is to make sure people have the skills they need to fill these new jobs. Since 1999, The Trust has been making grants to better organize a system that supports job creation and worker training. Our efforts, in concert with the Workforce Development Funders’ Group (which we house) and the City, have spawned several agencies. One is the Workforce Professionals Training Institute, which improves the skills of nonprofit staff who help others get jobs. A $100,000 grant will expand popular programs for job trainers to work with the unemployed and those with prison records, helping them get internships and leave great impressions at interviews.

The grant also will fund three new programs that teach trainers to use Web 2.0 technologies, help job seekers use internships to get into careers, and help people with limited literacy get the education they need to get jobs. “In this economic downturn there are fewer resources available to meet the needs of more job seekers,” said Louis Miceli, executive director of the Training Institute. “Free and low-cost digital tools, such as CareerVoyages and CareerZone, blogs, and wikis help workforce practitioners make the most of their day, helping more people find jobs in less time.”

Read more about our grants at work.