Connecting to Advantages Helps You Find BenefitsInformation for homeless and relocated families in New York City Do you know anyone who thinks it's easy to understand the rules and regulations involved in getting benefits like food stamps, or Medicare? Judith Rubenstein didn't think it was easy either when she started researching the problem but she'd found a good solution. Judith was named New Yorker of the Week by NY1 News recently for setting up an organization called Connecting to Advantages to help low income and unemployed New Yorkers access benefits they're entitled to have but may not know about. Just one example: Did you know that if you don't file tax forms because you live on p.a., social security, SSDI, SSI, just food stamps or nothing, you still can get money form the NYC School Tax Credit. And it won't reduce your benefits or food stamps. Now Connecting to Advantages has 40 trained volunteers located at eight worksites around NYC ready to help you
As Judith told NY1 interviewers "I want families to have more money more easily so they can pay more attention to their children's school, to their children's summer camp, so they can pay more attention to registering to vote, deciding who to vote for." |
"When You Believe in People, They Rise to the Occasion"by Crystal Yakacki Hannah I heard about Judith Rubenstein, founder of Connecting to Advantages (CtA), long before I met her. I was volunteering with NYCCAH (New York City Coalition Against Hunger), a position that would ultimately bring Joel Berg's project All You Can Eat, which we published in 2008, to my attention. I was enjoying the work there, but wanted to get involved in a smaller project where I could really jump in and be of good use. Judith had an idea for a new nonprofit and was looking for help; I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Judith's idea--one that has since flourished into the three-year-old 501c(3) Connecting to Advantages (CtA), for which I now serve as a board member--was an innovative approach to case management. As opposed to other efforts, which usually bring social workers into communities from outside, CtA trains volunteer community members, people who access the same Public Assistance, SSI, Medicaid and Food Stamps as their clients, to do the referral work, thus making them leaders in their communities. The peer relationship of volunteers to clients empowers both groups, and is entirely unique to CtA. Volunteers become seasoned advisors, referring clients to the government benefits for which they are eligible, and helping to provide further information and assistance on crucial issues like medical care for the uninsured, affordable housing, and access to emergency food and shelter. CtA tables at food pantries, soup kitchens, low-income housing community spaces, psychosocial clubs, and unemployment offices. Judith is a whirlwind of a person. You see her coming from down the block and her energy and enthusiasm is palpable. I first met her at the St. Francis Xavier food pantry, where she was to train me to help start the project at a new church. I was shocked that first day by how much she trusted me and encouraged me to act independently. She truly wants people to feel ownership over what they do, and to feel capable of learning and helping others. I felt empowered by her, and with every training I felt more and more like an asset to the group. As the project continued, I saw her share this confidence with every new volunteer. This was a particularly interesting approach to me because too many of the social services in New York City set out to make people feel stupid. People come to services in a state of confusion, and the services convince them that they need experts to interpret the information being given to them. This is a lie. When you believe in people, they rise to the occasion. CtA is an all-volunteer run group, and everyone involved is competent and feels fulfilled by and proud of their work. What I have loved most about working with CtA is getting to share time with its lively cast of characters. It attracts caring and self-possessed people who have a lot going on in their lives and a lot to contribute. I don't think any two of us are more than 3% alike, and yet I've rarely seen the kind of camaraderie and affection that exists in our circle. What unites us so strongly is our belief in the project, and our desire to share the confidence it brings with others. My co-volunteer at Metro Baptist church, the inimitable Carmen Vasquez, is a perfect example. Each week, when making the announcements, I would typically stand apart and call out to people the list of services we were focusing on that month. Carmen, on the other hand, would go right out into the crowd. Before I knew it she'd be ushering someone into our office (the church kitchen), with an arm draped lovingly around a shoulder. The chatting back and forth would not cease until we had to close up. We helped an immigrant mother with an eight-month-old baby--who never would have come forward without Carmen's outreach--to receive the baby clothes and blankets that she desperately needed. We helped dozens of clients to receive nearly $300 each from the school tax credit, a kept-in-the-dark tax credit and benefits package for New Yorkers that CtA popularized. We helped countless people apply for the crucial food stamps that their family was eligible for. Before we knew it, people were bringing in their relatives and neighbors to ask questions and seek advice. The pantry has become more of a community because of CtA, and because of Carmen. I've seen news of a new perk (free cell phones, for example, or discounts on heating bills) become the hot topic of the day, and a line of people that is typically sleepy and quiet come alive with interest. Still, although anyone involved in social work sees plenty of help come to people, the longer you spend in social work the more clearly you see how fundamentally flawed our system is. One in five children in New York City don't have enough food to eat. 39,000 people live without homes, and this number is rapidly increasing-and most of the homeless people are families. No one should go hungry while living among NYC opulence. No one should be permitted to work around the clock and come home with barely enough income to feed his or her children. Only systemic changes will truly address poverty. My hope is that as CtA picks up steam (as well as donations, grants, and government aid to finance our efforts), we will be better able to bring more and more advocacy into what we do, and our voices will be those of confident community members who can reach a vast network of people, neighborhoods, and groups. CtA has the potential to be a true grassroots organization: not one run by a constantly changing staff, but by volunteers who represent, and who know intimately, the concerns and needs of neighborhoods all over the city. Crystal Yakacki Hannah is an editor at Seven Stories Press. |
Mourning the Choices that Might Have Beenby Judith Rubenstein I founded Connecting to Advantages to help increase the number of low-income New Yorkers eligible for public and private assistance who actually receive that financial help. I work with poor clients, and I work with volunteers – most often peers of the low-income clients – who become community leaders by dint of their service. Although I’ve assisted these populations for years through jobs with other social service agencies, my involvement with them of late has made me angry. It seems clearer that the powers that be are not truly driven to alleviate poverty (or they would have done so already), and so much human potential goes unused because of it. A connection between the local scene and the national stage demonstrates my point. Sonia Sotomayor is now one of our Supreme Court justices. We have learned that she grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx and was raised by her mother, who had emigrated from Puerto Rico and was widowed when Sonia was little. The family was not well-to-do. Articles have described her mother, an energetic individual concerned with the welfare of her two children, arranging for private high school, saving to purchase an encyclopedia, and enabling Sonia to do well in this private high school. Then came a full scholarship to Princeton University, Yale Law School, several lofty legal positions, and the rest is history. Without this singularly energetic mother, Jackie Sotomayor is a volunteer for Connecting to Advantages (CtA). She was raised on the Lower East Side by low-income parents, one of whom had emigrated from Puerto Rico. Jackie lived a more typical life for less-affluent residents of New York City. She attended her neighborhood public schools, leaving after eighth grade. She is less than perfectly literate. She compensates for her lack of skill at reading by memorizing client forms that we do repetitively, such as the Verizon Lifeline application for residential phone discounts. Jackie attends each CtA volunteer training session twice, so as to better learn the material, and keeps at home her own personal resource book, containing the information sheets we give to clients, so she can better learn about the variety of benefits and excel as a community leader. Jackie loves her work with CtA. She is responsible and caring, empathetic in her community outreach. She, too, is a “wise Latina” – who never had the slightest chance of holding professional jobs like Sonia. How do we facilitate more Sotomayors – and Kandahars and Browns and Diazes – to become high-powered professionals, if they so choose? This is, in essence, the goal of CtA. Our activities – composing information sheets on various kinds of government and private-sector aid and subsidies, then spreading the information to low-income NYC residents who may be eligible – are designed to make financial and quality-of-life benefits accessible. We describe paths to receiving more food, money and health care, free tutoring, free summer camp, voter registration, ways to influence legislators, and more. We want our clients and our volunteers, who are peers of the low-income public assistance, food stamp, Supplemental Security Income recipients whom they serve, to have opportunities like Sonia Sotomayor had. So, we steer people to $200 per person in food stamps every month, reduction of their monthly Verizon phone bill from $30 to $2, and help with their Con Edison bill in the form of a HEAP benefit of $50 or more each winter. These are bits of comfort for which we pat ourselves on the back. But huge inequities continue, like poor people’s higher obesity rate, lower health status, and obstacles to good housing and education. The Bloomberg administration implies that lower-income New Yorkers disproportionately ignore doctors’ appointments and, as parents, attend to their children’s schooling less than they should. Students from poor neighborhoods don’t do as well as those in wealthier ones, and have a higher truancy rate. Is this solvable by paying families to behave differently – to dole out cash for low-income parents to attend parent-teacher conferences, as Mayor Bloomberg’s Opportunity NYC program is doing? The idea of luring people to behave differently by paying them suggests that they might be enjoying these less constructive behaviors or continuing them for some other undecipherable purpose. A better focus of the government’s resources and effort would be to fix the lousy schools that Jackie Sotomayor attended. With the endless debates over DOE structure and who reports to whom, whether to pay teachers based on the “toughness” of their schools, how much student testing to do – it just looks like we want to perpetuate this situation by looking busy meanwhile. Graduating young people who know how to read, write, and do arithmetic would provide a great deal more than the bits of comfort CtA facilitates. Consider a Connecting to Advantages workshop on the NYC School Tax Credit: $145 that residents working in the city get when they file taxes, even if they take in too little to owe income tax. Non-tax-filers can fill out the simple NYC-210 form and get that $145 refund just for having lived here all year. We run large workshops for clients to fill out the forms. Denise and Angel, two CtA volunteers, ran such a session at Trinity Church’s food pantry the winter before last. We put out flyers advertising the workshop, and expected 15 or so clients. Eighty came. $145 is a big deal, and being a regular American citizen who files taxes is alluring. Denise and Angel took the 80 eager applicants in stride. They ushered the group in to the soup kitchen’s seats. They remembered how things were done in third grade, and led everyone through the form at once. They ran around the room checking them. They had the clients pass completed forms across the row for ease of collection. They urged them out of the room and took on the next batch – then recruited two or three adept filers to help. When the room cleared, they re-checked each form before they gave it to me to mail in bulk, as the state tax department said we could. So why is Denise on public assistance herself? Why did New York City’s school system leave her without a diploma? Why wasn’t her eagerness and her responsibility harnessed in high school? Why wasn’t she pushed into college? Why didn’t she have a choice of high paying, interesting professions? Why can’t the city connect her with a job to use that managerial talent? Why, when Angel found he had diabetes 10 years ago, did the city’s poor people’s health care system not teach him how to manage it so he could continue working, rather than become disabled and subsist on disability payments? What’s bad about poverty as I see it in the food pantries and the housing developments in which CtA works is not just that you have little food to eat or cheap clothes to wear. It’s that you have fewer choices. What job to take? Work right out of school, or first do advanced study in a graduate program? Read Harlequin romances or Shakespeare? Listen to Michael Jackson or Mozart, watch “Dancing with the Stars” or the Harlem Ballet Theatre? None is better than the other, but choice – choice is better. Just as unfair as having no choice, is competing with middle- and upper-class people who have so much more. Teachers prefer to teach that latter group. Hospitals prefer to serve them. So do the police and the sanitation departments. Feelings get hurt, poor people feel hopeless, they continue to skip their doctors’ appointments and parent-teacher conferences. They continue to get blamed for that behavior, and the cycle continues. I love the organization I founded three years ago, and I think our work training community leaders is powerful. The downside is watching their effective leadership and aching for the choices that might have been theirs, had they not been raised poor. Judith Rubenstein has a master's degree in community psychology and is project director of Connecting to Advantages. She can be contacted at connectingtoadvantages@gmail.com. |
Agency in the City Tries to Seek Out the Poorby Julie Bosman In 2007, Judith Rubenstein, a Bronx native and former social worker, started a volunteer organization called Connecting to Advantages, which helps needy people find social services. Instead of setting up an office and waiting for people to find them, Ms. Rubenstein and her volunteers, many of whom are low-income themselves, go to places where needy people congregate. They started by seeking out the chronically poor at food pantries and housing projects, but recently they have also begun searching for middle-class people who have lost their jobs, at places like the career center in the Department of Labor office in Downtown Brooklyn. “These are the folks who are new to government services,” Ms. Rubenstein said. “First, they don’t know that they’re eligible for things. And boy, are they eligible!” Ms. Rubenstein and her volunteers, armed with notebooks full of information on housing, health and other resources, sit down with people at individual sessions. “Some of them are a little teary when they come in,” she said. People are often shocked to discover that they qualify for food stamps, or that there are medical and dental offices that charge on a sliding scale, or that half-fare MetroCards are available for people 65 and older. “They spew and spew and spew because finally somebody’s listening to them,” she said. “And they tell us how brilliant and talented they used to be, and how brilliant and talented their children are, but that right now they don’t have a job. We just shut our mouths and listen.” |
For needy, city offers red tapeby Neil deMause “The nouveau poor are finding out what the never-rich already knew.” When Judith Rubenstein was named NY1’s “New Yorker of the Week” recently, she was immediately deluged with 70 phone messages. They weren’t congratulations — that’s what Facebook is for — but rather viewers calling for the help that her organization Connecting To Advantages provides in accessing public benefits, from tax rebates to food stamps. The callers ran the gamut, from seniors needing help with utilities to laid-off middle-class workers with mortgages and no way to pay them. “And a 19-year-old with a baby,” Rubinstein recalls, “who said, ‘I went to the food stamp office, and they said they couldn’t help me until I was 22, but I was sure they were wrong.’ And in fact, they were wrong.” Notwithstanding the glass-half-full economic stories we keep getting deluged with — my favorite are the ones that tout falling rates of new jobless claims as good news, though a more accurate headline might be “America Running Out of People to Fire” — this city is still growing increasingly crowded with people who don’t have money to pay for housing, food, child care and health costs all at the same time. And when they seek help, the nouveau poor are finding out what the never-rich already knew: Getting government aid can be as much work as a full-time job. Try it yourself. Call 311 about food stamps, and you’ll soon find yourself lost in the thicket of the city Human Resource Administration’s automated info line. Or you could try the city’s much-hyped ACCESS NYC Web site — when I dutifully input all my family data, it spit back a list of programs it “cannot make a determination” whether I’m eligible for. Clicking on “apply online for programs” helpfully results in an error message. Instead, we’re left with Rubenstein and her band of unpaid volunteers, who have to beg their way into soup kitchens and unemployment offices. Meanwhile, a Ready Access to Assistance bill to allow info tables at all city offices has been stalled for three years because the mayor is opposed. He should reconsider — the city’s in no position to turn down free help in clearing red tape. Your browser may not support display of this image. |
NYer of The Week: Organizer Helps Needy Locals Apply for City Resources07/03/09 |
FOOD, FOOD EVERYWHERE BUT CAN'T AFFORD TO BUYNow that nearly two out of five New Yorkers report trouble affording food, new city and nonprofit efforts to help are coming not a moment too soon.by Kalyn Belsha With the cost of food, rent, and fuel on the rise, it’s logical that some New Yorkers are having more trouble putting food on the table. But the numbers from a report issued earlier this month by the Food Bank for New York City are startling. A staggering 3.1 million residents, or 38 percent of the New York City population, said they had difficulty affording needed food last year. This figure is up a substantial 55 percent from just five years ago when 2 million residents expressed difficulty, in a similar Food Bank survey. And while low-income households continue to have the most difficulty affording food, the survey also revealed that an increasing number of employed, college-educated, and middle-income residents have joined the ranks of those facing down an emptier cupboard. According to Áine Duggan, vice president of government relations, policy, and research at the Food Bank for New York City, the fact that more and more middle-income residents have trouble making ends meet without some kind of assistance is a disconcerting marker of a dark trend.
“The statistics illustrate what we all knew to be true. The rising cost of food and rent and a recession that no one wants to admit are really taking their toll. It’s a telltale sign that we are in pretty dire times and that something drastic needs to happen,” Duggan said. The fifth report of its kind, Food Bank’s NYC Hunger Experience 2008 asked respondents to rank their difficulty affording food from “very” or “somewhat” to “not very” or “not difficult at all.” The data was then sorted by gender, ethnicity or race, age, income, employment, level of education, household size and borough. (Conducted over three days in mid-February, the survey used random digit dialing of New York City residents age 18 and older. Interviews with the survey’s 846 participants were administered in both English and Spanish.) Perhaps that “something drastic” hasn’t happened yet, but since the creation of Mayor Bloomberg’s Food Policy Task Force two years ago, increasing the number of residents in need who receive food assistance has become a “key component” of the administration’s effort to combat poverty. According to the latest data from the Human Resources Administration (HRA), as of this April more than 1.14 million New York City residents relied on the food stamp program for assistance, up more than 46,000 recipients since the same time two years ago. Most recently, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is heading a new initiative to increase enrollment in the food stamp program: a data match to identify households already on Medicaid that may qualify for food stamp enrollment, based on the two programs’ similar eligibility requirements. Since food stamps are a federally-funded benefit, localities are eager to sign people up because the assistance won’t come out of the state’s budget and incurs only minimal administrative costs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers the food stamp program at the federal level while state agencies determine eligibility, allotments, and distribution of benefits. According to the most recent USDA report, the federal government spent $30.4 billion on food stamp assistance in fiscal year 2007, up six percent from the $28.6 billion it spent in fiscal year 2005. Conducted by HRA the week of June 2, the data match identified more than 635,000 New York City households that might qualify for food stamp enrollment. Each month, starting in July with Queens and ending in November with Staten Island, HRA and City Council will target one of the five boroughs, sending information to matched households. As outreach begins in each borough, a new phone-in service for applying to the food stamp program will be made available. Callers will still need to visit a food stamp program office in order to fully register, but the phone lines are aimed at reducing paperwork and encouraging more residents to continue the process, says City Council spokeswoman Laura Gordon. Residents of the data match households will receive a letter explaining their possible eligibility as well as a brochure detailing the food stamp program and the application process. Gordon notes the letter and brochure will be sent in English as well as Spanish to areas with limited English-proficient speakers. At the bottom of every letter there will be directions in Arabic, Chinese, Haitian, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and English telling people they can call 311 to get more information about the food stamp program in their native language. While City Council says it’s not attempting to calculate how many of the 635,000 households will definitely qualify for, or even seek enrollment in, the food stamp program, HRA plans to monitor the households targeted by the data match to see if there's an increase in program registration among them. The city plans to partner with community-based organizations for a more direct outreach attempt, too. Because the data match identified which zip codes have the highest number of households that might qualify for food stamps, volunteers can target outreach in food pantries, grocery stores, and other locations in these specific areas. Advocates say it is just this “personal touch” that is necessary to increase program awareness and enrollment. According to Duggan of the Food Bank, as more families become eligible for assistance, community-based outreach becomes the “most important component” in providing residents with the benefits and services to which they are entitled. While there are many obstacles that prevent those who qualify for food assistance from applying, failure to realize that one is eligible is a large factor. Duggan points out that as food prices increase and wages remain stagnant, an increasing number of working individuals will be eligible for benefits—perhaps for the first time in their lives—and very local-level outreach can help clear up confusion. Judith Rubenstein, founder and project director of Connecting to Advantages, has seen firsthand the benefits of a community-based outreach approach. After more than 20 years working with social services initiatives in New York City, Rubenstein founded her Manhattan-based organization in Jan. 2007 to help those in need receive benefits. She says Connecting to Advantages is unique in that it trains volunteers, who are oftentimes peers of people seeking assistance, to be able to identify those who might qualify for food assistance or benefit programs. Through a “grassroots approach” to data matching, Rubenstein and her volunteers set up information tables in five food pantries across Manhattan and speak with customers waiting in line, informing them about assistance programs. “It’s sort of a community leadership thing. We’re not changing the face of the city right now, but we’re modeling changing the face of the city,” said Rubenstein. Crystal Yakacki, who has volunteered with the program for more than a year, agrees. She points out that people are often uncomfortable applying for food assistance and it helps to see and hear evidence that the services work. “Our approach creates a community at the pantries. Because you’re making announcements and you’re talking to people on line and people are coming in and out, people at the pantry start talking to each other. And people bring their neighbors and their friends. It gets people who are going to food pantries talking to one another about what benefits they’re eligible for and what other resources are available to them.” Connecting to Advantages and other community-based organizations like it are just the kind of groups with which Quinn’s new initiative hopes to partner. And while its measures are a short-term solution to a longer term problem, advocates like Food Bank’s Duggan say this is nonetheless a step in the right direction. “It’s one more piece in the puzzle," she says. |
One tax rebate is quite simple to cash in onby Neil Demause With tax day coming up tomorrow, Judith Rubinstein is a bundle of energy, spreading the word about the tax rebate no one knows about. Called the city school tax credit, it’s an offshoot of the state’s STAR property-tax rebate. (It also has nothing to do with schools — welcome to Albany logic.) “When you do your taxes, there’s a box that asks, ‘Did you live in New York City for the last 12 months?’” explains Rubinstein, director of Connecting To Advantages. That’s the only requirement. “It’s the one stupid refund that you can get even if you don’t do the full tax form.” The rebate isn’t huge — $145 for this year, $385 if you’ve never claimed it and are filing for past years as well — but that can be a fortune if you’re surviving on food stamps or Social Security. And while nearly all tax filers get the rebate automatically by checking that box, most poor people don’t file taxes. It’s why Rubinstein and her handful of volunteers have been trudging around to food pantries, preaching the gospel of filling out a one-page IT-210 form — basically that one check box and where you want your check mailed — to the city’s poor. Her last stop: tomorrow at 12:30 at Trinity Lutheran Church on Avenue B, where she’ll have stamps on hand to help last-minute filers. If you’re wondering why in a city with umpteen thousand civil servants, it’s up to a single unpaid advocate to tell people their rights, you’re not alone. Mayor Bloomberg has boasted of mailing pre-filled forms to New Yorkers eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit — a credit that, perhaps not coincidentally, mostly costs the feds, not the city — but he’s done little to push the school tax credit. City workers seem as ignorant as anyone: When Rubinstein called 311, the baffled operator could only refer her to the state tax department’s 800 number. If the city can’t provide help itself, it could at least OK the Ready Access to Assistance Act, which would allow advocates like Rubinstein to set up tables in city benefits offices — as they can in state offices, and did in the city pre-Giuliani. Yet despite overwhelming City Council support, the bill has been stalled for two years — because Bloomberg, notwithstanding his usual obsession with access to information, opposes it. Unless that changes, the tax rebate for all is likely to leave out those who need it most. |
You Don’t Have to Pay Taxes to Get A Refund! NYC School Tax Credit Worth Up To $300+by Fred Scaglione While the value of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low wage workers has drawn some publicity, another refund opportunity – one which is available even to those who legally do not file tax returns at all – has gone almost unnoticed. The New York City School Tax Credit is available to individuals who have lived in the City for the last 12 months. For 2007, the refund is $145. Those who haven’t previously filed can also receive back refunds of $115 for 2006, $62.50 for 2005 and $62.50 for 2004. “If your income is very, very low – perhaps you are on public assistance, on social security, or getting SSI – and legally not doing your taxes, this is the one refund you are eligible for anyway,” says Judith Rubenstein, Project Director at Connecting to Advantages. The organization, which trains volunteers at local soup kitchens and food pantries to provide information and referrals for benefit programs, has been helping people file for the refund since January. “We have had workshops in soup kitchens where every person there is eligible to get this money,” says Rubenstein. While Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites are providing valuable assistance for individuals seeking EITC and even the new Federal Stimulus Package refunds, many of the poorest New Yorkers don’t bother to file taxes at all and miss out on the NYC School Refund benefit. To apply, eligible individuals simply complete a NYC-210 “Claim for New York City School Tax Credit”. “It is very easy,” says Rubenstein. Forms are available on line through the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and can be copied for submission purposes. Connecting to Advantages is collaborating with a number of partners to get the word out and help those eligible file for refunds. Partnership for the Homeless will be offering targeted assistance on the NYC School Tax Refund at its East New York Family Resource Center at 100 Pennsylvania Avenue. To get information, call 646-491-3303. Housing Works will hosting an April 9th workshop on the benefit at 2:00 p.m. The workshop will be held at the agency’s new Women’s Health Center at 57 Willoughby Street in Brooklyn. The St. Francis Xavier Church Food Pantry on 16th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues will also be hosting a special workshop for eligible individuals on April 12th from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon with volunteers from Connecting to Advantages. The food pantry is one of seven local emergency food programs at which Connecting to Advantages regularly provides services. Individuals should come to the workshop with their social security number and a pen. To get more information about Connecting to Advantages and its programming, call 646-226-3259. |
