City Gives $250,000 to Assist Jewish Poor

Mayor John V. Lindsay, citing “widespread poverty among groups that previously had not attempted to benefit from governmental efforts to assist the poor,” announced today “an important effort”– totaling $250,000–“to assist the Jewish poor.” The city’s goal, Lindsay said, “is to achieve the fullest possible participation by poor people in community action and other anti-poverty programs.” A city administration spokesman termed this grant the first of its kind for Jewish poor.

At a press conference, Lindsay said “the most effective way to attempt to deal with this situation is at the neighborhood level and through the involvement of community organizations and institutions to which many of the poor relate.” He praised the “effort to assist the Jewish poor” of the newly formed Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, “under the effective leadership of Jerry Becker,” and the Human Resources Administration, headed by Jule M. Sugarman. The Coordinating Council, embracing more than 30 Jewish anti-poverty groups, is headed by Jerome Becker, a lawyer and member of the City Human Rights Commission.

On the Council’s recommendation, the grant will be used mainly for community action programs on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and in the Grand Con-course-Tremont section of the Bronx “where there are substantial concentrations of Jewish poor” outside the city’s 26 official poverty areas. Administration of the funds will be handled on the Lower East Side by the United Jewish Council of the East Side, a member of the Coordinating Council, and in the Bronx section by a neighborhood organization to be created. Each of these two drives will receive $75,000.

HAILED AS ‘VERY GOOD FIRST STEP’

The remainder of the quarter-million-dollar grant–$100,000–will be used by the Coordinating Council for what the Mayor’s office called “research on Jewish poverty in the city, programs to assist the poor and neighborhood groups to participate in those programs.” Sugarman, who has been criticized from Jewish anti-poverty workers for alleged disregard of the city’s Jewish poor, said today that “Over the past two years, we have substantially expanded our efforts to assist the Jewish poor in the youth services and manpower areas,” and that his agency recently took “significant steps in extending child care and senior citizens services to the Jewish needy.”

Rabbi Jack Cohen, executive director of the Coordinating Council, called the one-year grant “a very good first step” and told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Council had “assurances that this is just the beginning.” He said there were “pretty, pretty close prospects” for additional aid, but declined to elaborate.

Asked why thousands of dollars were needed to research the situation of the Jewish poor in the city considering the disclosures in recent months by the Association of Jewish Anti-Poverty Workers, headed by S. Elly Rosen, Rabbi Cohen said Jewish-population figures were outdated. It has been estimated that 250,000 of the city’s nearly 1,9 million Jews live below the poverty line.