Tuesday, June 21, 2011
HUD 2010 report: NJ homeless increased 4.3%
Supportive Housing Assn of NJ reports HUD announced a 4.3% increase of homelss in the state 2009 to 2010. To read the article click https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j4fjUfDJsKfaxtuFZO3DFIrIVlPXYQDEJ0ldlyCtG2g/edit?hl=en_US
Monday, June 13, 2011
OCHD releases new WIC guidelines
Ocean County Health Department Contact: Leslie Terjesen
PO Box 2191 Public Information Officer
Toms River, NJ 08754-2191 732-341-9700, ext. 7224
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: June 10, 2011
OCEAN COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT OFFERS NEW
WIC PROGRAM GUIDELINES
“
program for pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under the age of 5 years, who qualify, have
released the new income guidelines, effective July 1, 2011. Any family who is interesting in applying for the
WIC Program can call 732-341-9700, ext. 7250 in Toms River, 732-370-0111 in Lakewood, or 609-978-2500 in Manahawkin for an appointment,” said Freeholder Deputy Director Gerry P. Little, Liaison to the Ocean County Board of Health.
Daniel Regenye, Ocean County Health Department Public Health Coordinator, said the WIC Program
Income Eligibility Standards are based on the Federal Department of Health and Human Services Income
Poverty Guidelines that are effective July 1, 2011. Participation in the WIC Program is limited to those persons whose gross income (i.e., income before deductions for income taxes, Social Security taxes, insurance premiums, bonds, etc.) is equal to or less than the income poverty guidelines increased by 185%.
No allowance is made for the use of a standard deduction or hardship when calculating a family’s income.
The following are the new Eligibility Guidelines:”
The New Jersey State WIC Program (Women, Infants’ and Children), a supplemental nutritionWIC Income Eligibility Guidelines
(Effective from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012)
48 Contiguous States, D.C., Guam and Territories
Family Size Annual Monthly Twice-Monthly Bi-Weekly Weekly
1
$20,147 $1,679 $840 $ 775 $ 3882
27,214 2,268 1,134 1,047 5243
34,281 2,857 1,429 1,319 6604
5 48,415 4,035 2,018 1,863 932
41,348 3,446 1,723 1,591 7966
55,482 4,624 2,312 2,134 1,0677
8 69,616 5,802 2,901 2,678 1,339
Each Add'l Member Add
+$7,067 +$589 +$295 +$272 +$136
62,549 5,213 2,607 2,406 1,203
2011 Housing and Community Design Awards
HUD Secretary's award:
Community-Informed Design
This award recognizes projects that incorporate housing within other community amenities for the purpose of either revitalization or planned growth.These designs show that affordable housing need not be the stereotypical units people envision when they think "affordable housing."
Click on the link below to view the award winners and the stories behind them.
http://www.huduser.org/portal/research/housingCommDesign_2011_2.html
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
New Report Card Gives Failing Grades on U.S. Housing Rights
National Law Center
on Homelessness and Poverty
As students across the country receive their final grades for the semester, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty has released a report card grading the United States on its response to homelessness and its compliance with the human right to housing. "Simply Unacceptable" : Homelessness and the Human Right to Housing in the U.S. issues failing grades in more than one category.
According to international standards, the human right to housing consists of seven elements: security of tenure; availability of services, materials, and infrastructure; affordability; accessibility; habitability; location; and cultural adequacy. This report gives the U.S. letter grades on each of them and offers common sense solutions the U.S. can adopt to better meet the housing needs of homeless and poor people.
The report calls for the continuation and increased funding for a successful homelessness prevention program, funding for federally subsidized housing, making laws protecting tenants of foreclosed properties from eviction permanent, and the creation of a federal living wage.
Read the full report here. (You may have to cut 'n paste this link.) http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/SimplyUnacceptableReport.pdf
on Homelessness and Poverty
As students across the country receive their final grades for the semester, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty has released a report card grading the United States on its response to homelessness and its compliance with the human right to housing. "Simply Unacceptable" : Homelessness and the Human Right to Housing in the U.S. issues failing grades in more than one category.
According to international standards, the human right to housing consists of seven elements: security of tenure; availability of services, materials, and infrastructure; affordability; accessibility; habitability; location; and cultural adequacy. This report gives the U.S. letter grades on each of them and offers common sense solutions the U.S. can adopt to better meet the housing needs of homeless and poor people.
The report calls for the continuation and increased funding for a successful homelessness prevention program, funding for federally subsidized housing, making laws protecting tenants of foreclosed properties from eviction permanent, and the creation of a federal living wage.
Read the full report here. (You may have to cut 'n paste this link.) http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/SimplyUnacceptableReport.pdf
Helping others-Vols needed for Medicare info
The Ocean County Freeholders announced an opportunity to help others navigate through the Medicare maze and is offering a five-session training program:
MEDICARE ASSISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAM LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS
WANTED: volunteers willing to help seniors with questions on Medicare programs.
The Ocean County Office of Senior Services will be hosting State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) counselor training sessions for individuals interested in helping Medicare enrollees, said Freeholder Director Joseph H. Vicari.
Once trained, counselors will assist senior citizens with questions on Medicare, Medicare Supplemental Insurance, Medicare HMO's and Prescription Drug Assistance.
"This is a great opportunity to volunteer and lend a hand to our older residents," Vicari said. "Many seniors are apprehensive about the wide range of Medicare benefits available and appreciate the help of our SHIP counselors."
Sessions are scheduled for June 29, July 6, July 13, July 20, and July 26 from 9 am to 4pm. Trainees must attend all five days of training to be certified as a SHIP volunteer counselor.
The training will be held at the Ocean County Fire and First Aid Training Center, Volunteer Way, Waretown.
For further information and to register, please call the Office of Senior Services, 732-929-2091 or 1-800-668-4899.
MEDICARE ASSISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAM LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS
WANTED: volunteers willing to help seniors with questions on Medicare programs.
The Ocean County Office of Senior Services will be hosting State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) counselor training sessions for individuals interested in helping Medicare enrollees, said Freeholder Director Joseph H. Vicari.
Once trained, counselors will assist senior citizens with questions on Medicare, Medicare Supplemental Insurance, Medicare HMO's and Prescription Drug Assistance.
"This is a great opportunity to volunteer and lend a hand to our older residents," Vicari said. "Many seniors are apprehensive about the wide range of Medicare benefits available and appreciate the help of our SHIP counselors."
Sessions are scheduled for June 29, July 6, July 13, July 20, and July 26 from 9 am to 4pm. Trainees must attend all five days of training to be certified as a SHIP volunteer counselor.
The training will be held at the Ocean County Fire and First Aid Training Center, Volunteer Way, Waretown.
For further information and to register, please call the Office of Senior Services, 732-929-2091 or 1-800-668-4899.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wyckoff lawyer Jeffrey Wild helping tent city stave off evictions
From the Bergen Record (May 31, 2011; Erik Shilling/staff writer:
Nina Rogala, left, has been living in Lakewood's tent city for about three years. Mark Mroczek, right, has been there about eight months.
For nearly a year Jeffrey J. Wild has spent his free time working on behalf of dozens of homeless men and women who are being threatened with eviction from a tent city they have established on publicly owned land in Ocean County.
Wild, 51, sees the case as more than just a local or regional issue, arguing that thousands of homeless people across New Jersey could benefit from his push to expand their rights to shelter on public land.
Spotlight
Name: Jeffrey J. Wild
Working pro bono, Wild has filed a suit on behalf of dozens of homeless men and women in Ocean County who are being evicted from their home on public land.
Hometown: Wyckoff
Occupation: Attorney
Age: 51
Education: B.A., Cornell University, 1982. J.D., Columbia University, 1985
Quote: "I have learned that New Jersey's 'safety net' is full of holes - and that men, women and children are falling through them, and hitting the ground every day."
"When it's a subfreezing night when we wouldn't send our pets outside, these people are being told they have to leave," Wild said at a May 5 hearing on the matter in Toms River. "The safety net cannot have holes."
Wild first met the tent city residents on a trip with other volunteers from the Barnert Temple synagogue in Franklin Lakes<http://www.northjersey.com/franklinlakes>. The pro-bono legal work he has done on their behalf takes up much of his time when he isn't helping to run the capital markets litigation team at Lowenstein Sandler, a Roseland-based law firm.
The case originated last summer, when the township of Lakewood sued for the right to remove most of the tent city residents from a patch of woods on township-owned land near a highway.
A judge initially ruled in the township's favor, saying that the residents had to vacate once the government found another place for them to stay. But Wild filed a counterclaim late last year, arguing that the government's temporary accommodations were a waste of money - some of the homeless had been put up in hotel rooms for $100 per night - and that the tent city residents had an implicit "right-to-shelter" under the state constitution that should allow them to stay on public land indefinitely.
Township officials responded by saying that the tent city, which includes an outhouse, tepees and livestock, was an environmental and safety hazard.
Township and county officials also said that the county's network of seven homeless shelters was sufficient, and that they had gone out of their way to offer temporary accommodations to the tent city residents.
"There is a difference between the government's authority to provide services and their obligation to do so," said Jean Cipriani, a lawyer for the Ocean County Board of Social Services. "There are many things that the government must do, but this is not one of them."
In North Jersey, advocates for the homeless said that they weren't aware of any large encampments of homeless people.
Advocates are aware of some men, usually itinerant workers, who live along the banks of the Passaic<http://www.northjersey.com/passaic> and Saddle rivers. But those encampments ordinarily involve just a few men, not dozens as in the Lakewood case.
The most recent official estimates suggest that around 1,400 homeless men and women live in Bergen County<http://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen>, and a comparable number live in Passaic County<http://www.northjersey.com/news/passaic_morris>.
"If there was any group like that in the city of Hackensack<http://www.northjersey.com/hackensack>, the police would've disbanded them long ago," said Robin Reilly, who founded the FAITH Foundation, a homeless services non-profit, in 2002. "But there are people out there. I know they're there. They call me in the morning because they want someone to know where to look."
Reilly said that the Lakewood tent city had a better shot at remaining because of its size.
"There's strength in numbers," she said.
For Wild, the issue isn't simply a question of right versus wrong. He also sees it from the standpoint of someone who has been personally touched by homelessness.
"My father was homeless at times during the Great Depression, so I have always known that, with just a little bad luck, any of us could be unable to make our monthly rent or mortgage," he said.
Wild's connection to the homeless in Lakewood started through an outreach program at Barnert Temple, which has been donating food, clothing, kerosene stoves and other equipment to the tent city residents since 2007.
"It's really rooted in the idea that every human being has worth," said Rabbi Elyse Frishman of Barnert Temple.
"When it became clear over time that the Lakewood community was interested in ejecting them and they had no place to go, Jeff became very concerned."
The suit faces uncertain prospects in the courts. Wild said that he was pleased that Superior Court Judge Vincent Grasso in Ocean County allowed parts of his counterclaim to go forward at the May 5 hearing. But Grasso dismissed Wild's broadest argument against the encampment crackdown - that it violated the state constitution.
"The issue in this case is not the plight of the homeless, but the procedural process," Grasso said. He also questioned both sides about specific state laws that the county was violating.
In response, Wild pointed to a long history of laws that he said applied to the Lakewood case, including the so-called Elizabethan Poor Laws, which he said firmly establish the state's obligation to provide food and shelter for its citizens.
But Cipriani, the Ocean County lawyer, called the Poor Laws "antiquated," and noted that some date to pre-colonial America.
Grasso seemed to agree, but instead of dismissing the case outright he gave Wild 45 days to "amend and amplify" his claim. Wild said Friday that he would file an expanded claim on July 1.
After that, a new hearing date may be set.
For the tent city residents, that means their encampment is safe - at least for now.
Several residents who attended the hearing seemed to take the judge's decision in stride even as they decried the process.
Michael Berenzweig, 61, said that he took up residence in the tent city more than a year ago as he and his wife suffered through a long stretch of unemployment. The two have since raised chickens there and maintain a makeshift home.
Berenzweig said he reacted to the judge's ruling with indifference.
"To me it's just a lot of dragging things on," he said. "People aren't looking at the gigantic issue in this thing, that homelessness and starvation could be solved. Everyone's ignoring it."
E-mail: shilling@northjersey.com
For nearly a year Jeffrey J. Wild has spent his free time working on behalf of dozens of homeless men and women who are being threatened with eviction from a tent city they have established on publicly owned land in Ocean County.
Wild, 51, sees the case as more than just a local or regional issue, arguing that thousands of homeless people across New Jersey could benefit from his push to expand their rights to shelter on public land.
Spotlight
Name: Jeffrey J. Wild
Working pro bono, Wild has filed a suit on behalf of dozens of homeless men and women in Ocean County who are being evicted from their home on public land.
Hometown: Wyckoff
Occupation: Attorney
Age: 51
Education: B.A., Cornell University, 1982. J.D., Columbia University, 1985
Quote: "I have learned that New Jersey's 'safety net' is full of holes - and that men, women and children are falling through them, and hitting the ground every day."
"When it's a subfreezing night when we wouldn't send our pets outside, these people are being told they have to leave," Wild said at a May 5 hearing on the matter in Toms River. "The safety net cannot have holes."
Wild first met the tent city residents on a trip with other volunteers from the Barnert Temple synagogue in Franklin Lakes<http://www.northjersey.com/franklinlakes>. The pro-bono legal work he has done on their behalf takes up much of his time when he isn't helping to run the capital markets litigation team at Lowenstein Sandler, a Roseland-based law firm.
The case originated last summer, when the township of Lakewood sued for the right to remove most of the tent city residents from a patch of woods on township-owned land near a highway.
A judge initially ruled in the township's favor, saying that the residents had to vacate once the government found another place for them to stay. But Wild filed a counterclaim late last year, arguing that the government's temporary accommodations were a waste of money - some of the homeless had been put up in hotel rooms for $100 per night - and that the tent city residents had an implicit "right-to-shelter" under the state constitution that should allow them to stay on public land indefinitely.
Township officials responded by saying that the tent city, which includes an outhouse, tepees and livestock, was an environmental and safety hazard.
Township and county officials also said that the county's network of seven homeless shelters was sufficient, and that they had gone out of their way to offer temporary accommodations to the tent city residents.
"There is a difference between the government's authority to provide services and their obligation to do so," said Jean Cipriani, a lawyer for the Ocean County Board of Social Services. "There are many things that the government must do, but this is not one of them."
In North Jersey, advocates for the homeless said that they weren't aware of any large encampments of homeless people.
Advocates are aware of some men, usually itinerant workers, who live along the banks of the Passaic<http://www.northjersey.com/passaic> and Saddle rivers. But those encampments ordinarily involve just a few men, not dozens as in the Lakewood case.
The most recent official estimates suggest that around 1,400 homeless men and women live in Bergen County<http://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen>, and a comparable number live in Passaic County<http://www.northjersey.com/news/passaic_morris>.
"If there was any group like that in the city of Hackensack<http://www.northjersey.com/hackensack>, the police would've disbanded them long ago," said Robin Reilly, who founded the FAITH Foundation, a homeless services non-profit, in 2002. "But there are people out there. I know they're there. They call me in the morning because they want someone to know where to look."
Reilly said that the Lakewood tent city had a better shot at remaining because of its size.
"There's strength in numbers," she said.
For Wild, the issue isn't simply a question of right versus wrong. He also sees it from the standpoint of someone who has been personally touched by homelessness.
"My father was homeless at times during the Great Depression, so I have always known that, with just a little bad luck, any of us could be unable to make our monthly rent or mortgage," he said.
Wild's connection to the homeless in Lakewood started through an outreach program at Barnert Temple, which has been donating food, clothing, kerosene stoves and other equipment to the tent city residents since 2007.
"It's really rooted in the idea that every human being has worth," said Rabbi Elyse Frishman of Barnert Temple.
"When it became clear over time that the Lakewood community was interested in ejecting them and they had no place to go, Jeff became very concerned."
The suit faces uncertain prospects in the courts. Wild said that he was pleased that Superior Court Judge Vincent Grasso in Ocean County allowed parts of his counterclaim to go forward at the May 5 hearing. But Grasso dismissed Wild's broadest argument against the encampment crackdown - that it violated the state constitution.
"The issue in this case is not the plight of the homeless, but the procedural process," Grasso said. He also questioned both sides about specific state laws that the county was violating.
In response, Wild pointed to a long history of laws that he said applied to the Lakewood case, including the so-called Elizabethan Poor Laws, which he said firmly establish the state's obligation to provide food and shelter for its citizens.
But Cipriani, the Ocean County lawyer, called the Poor Laws "antiquated," and noted that some date to pre-colonial America.
Grasso seemed to agree, but instead of dismissing the case outright he gave Wild 45 days to "amend and amplify" his claim. Wild said Friday that he would file an expanded claim on July 1.
After that, a new hearing date may be set.
For the tent city residents, that means their encampment is safe - at least for now.
Several residents who attended the hearing seemed to take the judge's decision in stride even as they decried the process.
Michael Berenzweig, 61, said that he took up residence in the tent city more than a year ago as he and his wife suffered through a long stretch of unemployment. The two have since raised chickens there and maintain a makeshift home.
Berenzweig said he reacted to the judge's ruling with indifference.
"To me it's just a lot of dragging things on," he said. "People aren't looking at the gigantic issue in this thing, that homelessness and starvation could be solved. Everyone's ignoring it."
E-mail: shilling@northjersey.com
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