JFSJ 
Thu May 07, 2009 at 00:36:14 AM EDT
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Some good news out of San Diego today, for those of us who care about the intersection between reducing energy use, creating jobs, and helping lower income communities... Los Vecinos, the first LEED-Certified Platinum, 100% solar-powered affordable housing in San Diego, offer 42-units of state of the art in green housing. ... The complex is located in the Chula Vista section of San Diego, and provides 3 floors of 1, 2 and 3-bedroom housing units. The complex also has a 1,500 square foot recreation center complete with fitness equipment, and space for classes offered such as finance, computer literacy and how to "go green." Eligible residents make between $16,600 and $58,800 USD per year (60% or less of the area's median income). The solar array covering the entire roof was installed by First Solar Inc and is a 93 kW system. Each apartment gets a certain number of solar panels hard-wired directly so it and gets whatever credit the system produces; the bigger the apartment, the more panels. The property was once a vacant motel that housed all sorts of riffraff, but is now a "recycled" property housing a community of 42 families. To achieve Platinum LEED status, the building was designed to minimize the size of both the carbon footprint and the utility bill of the building's residents. Aside from the extensive solar array, which power almost the entire building, units were designed to rely mainly on ceiling fans and natural ventilation.
Good to hear they got the riff-raff out! Ahem... My snarky remarks aside, this should be the future of affordable housing. Green housing isn't just for latte-sipping, Prius driving, Hollywood celebrities. If you are a college student and want to get in on the action (and you live in New York), we may have a few slots left on a great service learning trip to the South Bronx. We're working with Habitat for Humanity to help finish apartments in a LEED certified building that includes affordable units; we'll also be learning about other efforts to "green the ghetto," as Majora Carter likes to say. Here's a brief description: A train ride away. A different side of New York. Power plants. Waste facilities. The least green space in NYC. 1 in 4 are unemployed. 1 in 2 live at or below the poverty line. But the South Bronx is fighting for a different future. Community members are cleaning up hazardous waste, installing green roofs, restoring open spaces, and transforming broken sidewalks into bicycle paths. This summer, help the South Bronx community keep the momentum going! Get your hands dirty - join low-income families to build affordable homes in a LEED certified apartment building. Meet undergrads like you - spend a week with students passionate about social justice. Expand your mind - explore Jewish perspectives on urban housing and environmental justice.
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Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 16:08:56 PM EDT
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Communities Against Asian American Violence (CAAAV), in partnership with the Urban Justice Center (UJC), recently released a report about the effect of gentrification, real estate policy, and urban planning on Chinatown and its residents. It is called Converting Chinatown, and you can find a copy of the report here: http://www.urbanjustice.org/pdf/publications/ConvertingChinatown_dec08.pdf
Some may think that Chinatown is not affected by neighborhood change or gentrification, but CAAAV, a JFSJ grantee, strongly disputes that notion. Noting that building permits increased from 40 in 1990 to 970 in 2006, they pointed out that this growth has focused on luxury development, upscale and trendy eateries, and bars, which out price the local community and cater to English speakers. More sinister, though, is the targeted harassment of the local Chinatown population which, coupled with soaring rents for small business owners that cater to this population, create an increasing shift in demographics, displacing low-income and working class families.
CAAAV and UJC make strong recommendations on the city and state level to increase the accessibility of affordable housing for low income residents, including: expanding the definition of “family” that is used to determine succession rights for rent-stabilized apartments, mandating rent regulation for new buildings with more than six apartments, mandating a 50% affordable housing rate for all new development, and limiting the number of building permits issued in Chinatown.
There are a lot more jewels in this report, and it is very readable. If you want to get a sense of what neighborhoods need to fight displacement, take a look.
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Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 00:27:48 AM EST
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The Forward has an interesting article today about President Obama's effort to raise money for his health care plan by reducing the amount the wealthy ($250K and up) can deduct from their taxes when making charitable contributions. The current proposal lows the deduction by for the two highest tax brackets. It is set to go into effect in 2011, which is when the Bush tax cuts expire. Many non-profits, including those in the Jewish community, have been opposing this change. The argument is straightforward: if the wealthy, whose gifts make up almost half of all charitable giving, see their financial incentive to give reduced, they will respond by reducing their gifts. And the last thing non-profit leaders want to hear now isnother reason for donors to cut back their giving. So i appreciated the very different response from Simon Greer, who is quoted saying the following:
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Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 13:38:46 PM EST
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( - promoted by Mik Moore)
The New Year is a natural time to think about fresh starts and new beginnings. The Jewish Community is entering this year especially fraught with the need for something new, in the wake of the Madoff scandal (not to mention general financial upheaval). I want to honor a JFSJ Congregation Based Community Organizing grantee, Chapel Hill Kehillah, that started new organizing initiative in Chapel Hill, NC and is using its power to create social change and act responsibly on behalf of the community.
Chapel Hill Kehillah is a founding member of the Orange County Organizing Committee, an IAF affiliate, which launched a new platform last month. Drawing 300 leaders from 23 faith-based members, they laid out their new action agenda which addressed the need for change in North Carolina in affordable housing, living wages, environmental justice, education, healthcare, and quality of life for immigrant families.
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Fri Dec 12, 2008 at 13:25:09 PM EST
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( - promoted by Sheila Webb-Halpern)
You know it’s hard times when union workers get congratulations for getting a severance package after being laid off; when it takes a week-long sit-in to get employers to comply with federal regulations. But the members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America may well count themselves among the lucky by comparison. The NY Times yesterday described the way the current financial crisis has affected the lowest rung of the labor pool: nannies, housekeepers, home-care workers; they aptly called it “trickledown downsizing”
The article noted that as salaried and high-wage workers are being laid-off or become financially fearful, the women they employ to take care of their children and run their homes are being “downsized” as well, their hours gradually reduced or cut altogether. Ai-Jen Poo, executive director of Domestic Workers United (DWU), a JFSJ transformative organizing grantee, noted in the article that domestic workers have no safety net if their hours are cut, no severance package or legal protection.
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Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 13:13:57 PM EDT
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As Hurricane Gustav makes landfall and once again draws national attention to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, JFSJ is prepared to collaborate with our long-standing community partners to provide both immediate and long-term assistance. JFSJ has a dedicated fund, the Hurricane Recovery and Redevelopment Fund, to focus on grantmaking, lending, and community service in those areas most impacted by Hurricane Gustav and that are still working to recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Members of the JFSJ staff have been working through the weekend to be in touch with our partners throughout the region to express our support and concern and to get their assessment of their needs in the coming days and weeks. Keep checking in here for additional information about the recovery work as the situation develops.
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Tue Apr 29, 2008 at 13:03:43 PM EDT
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A Grantmaking Fellowship is now available at the Jewish Funds for Justice - for individuals interested in working at the intersection of grantmaking, community organizing and Jewish tradition. Fellowship Description:
The Fellowship is a two-year, full-time position. JFSJ is offering
two committed individuals the opportunity to participate fully as
members of the grantmaking team overseeing our internal portfolios and managed projects. This is a working fellowship with a strong learning component. Responsibilities will include roughly one-third program coordination, one-third administrative work and one-third learning, reflecting, researching and writing. The Fellowship will train and develop emerging leaders exploring a career in economic justice and philanthropy who are enthusiastic about working at the intersection of Jewish values, community organizing, leadership and grantmaking.
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Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 16:13:44 PM EDT
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 If you haven't already made plans for May 4-6, I hope you'll join me and dozens of other Jews at the Righteous Indignation Conference in Boston. I'll be doing a workshop, and Jill will be there as well, leading a track on workers rights. According to Jewschool (for some reason my best source on this), "conference speakers include david saperstein, ruth messinger, melissa weintraub, leonard fein, ... aryeh cohen, dara silverstein, alana alpert, arthur waskow, carinne luck, diane balser, dan sieradski, daniel sokatch, sharon brous, and jonah pesner (among others)."
As the announcement below makes clear, it is really just one long party (think Achasverosh).
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Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 14:48:34 PM EDT
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About ten years ago I was working at Jewish Funders Network and at one of our conferences Jeffrey Dekro, our co-founder and a board member, stood up in a session and talked about this idea he was developing, based on the Torah of Money (ToM) work that he had been doing for several years. The core of ToM, as discussed in his book (with Larry Bush) "Jews, Money and Social Responsibility" was that to paraphrase R. Yishmael in Bava Batra 175b, money is an ever flowing stream, the greatest area of Torah study. Put simply, we can relate to our money through a framework of mutual responsibility and the halachic ethical imperatives within Judaism, thereby elevating the simple everyday transactional behavior to the level of sacred and covenental financial actions. Big idea, sure. And now Jeffrey was proposing a way to give a tool to Jews who wanted to live the Torah of Money: a finance fund, held and operated by the Jewish community, to take investments from Jewish foundations and wealthy individuals and in turn invest that money in community development financial institutions (CDFIs) across America as an act of Tzedakah, while delivering below market interest returns to the investors. From that concept was born the Tzedec program and
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