Special to JTA Poverty Program Wrangle

A spokesman for a legal agency for the Jewish poor said today that a federal judge had reserved decision on a class action suit seeking postponement of Feb. 28 elections for the boards of the city’s 26 anti-poverty corporations but that the judge had also set a schedule for filing of depositions which would enable him to act on the postponement request before Feb. 28.

The Board of Legal Assistance for the Jewish Poor announced the filing of the class action lawsuit, seeking an injunction against the holding of the elections. The lawsuit was filed in Eastern District federal court in Brooklyn and a hearing was held last Thursday by federal Judge Thomas Platt.

The suit was filed by the Brooklyn office of Community Action for Legal Services (CALS) with which the Legal Assistance organization is affiliated. Steven M. Bemstein, managing attorney of the Brooklyn CALS office, said the suit was brought on behalf of six low-income residents who live outside the city’s 26 designated poverty areas, each served by an anti-poverty agency called a community corporation, with a locally-elected board.

Bernstein said that the suit also was filed on behalf of all other low-income New York City residents who live outside the 26 poverty areas and are thereby denied benefits from the poverty program.

Bemstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the suit was filed against the Community Services Administration (CSA), a federal umbrella agency for distribution of several million dollars annually in federal anti-poverty funds; the City of New York and the Human Resources Administration the city’s superagency for welfare and anti-poverty programs; and the Council Against Poverty (CAP), which was removed from its role as central agency for the 26 poverty agencies for incompetence.

THREE GOALS OF THE SUIT

The suit charges that implementation of the elections on Feb. 28 would deny the plaintiffs their constitutional rights to “equal protection and due process” and violate statutory requirements that there be “maximum feasible participation” by the poor in the federally-funded community action program.

Marvin Schick, chairman of the Board of Legal Assistance to the Poor, said the suit had three goals: to postpone the elections; establishment of new boundary lines for the 26 community corporations, now based on the outmoded 1960 federal census data; and “a more equitable distribution” of poverty funds, particularly for elderly poor living outside the 26 areas.

The suit charged that holding of the elections on Feb. 28 would continue “discriminatory and illegal” aspects of the poverty program, including one of critical importance to elderly poor Jews. That one is the use of three indices to measure poverty–welfare recipiency, juvenile delinquency and live births” which on their face discriminate against the elderly poor.”

POOR ELDERLY JEWS VICTIMIZED

Jewish organizations, particularly the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, have charged for years that the way New York City distributes such funds vicitimizes poor elderly Jews. The Coordinating Council has noted that most poor Jews are elderly Jews who resist going on welfare and that the indices of juvenile delinquency and live births are totally irrelevant to determining their income status.

The Council also has charged that many Jewish poor live outside the designated poverty areas, as do other ethnic poor, and suffer discrimination for that reason. The Coordinating Council last November cited official figures on distribution of anti-poverty funds in 1975 totalling $40,751,859, of which $349,121 went to poor Jews, less than one percent.

The poverty program structure has been criticized also by the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress–which recently asked Mayor Edward Koch to seek postponement of the Feb. 28 elections–and several non-Jewish ethnic groups.

FAILURE TO ACT

Schick said that the election’s postponement was essential to achievement of the other two objectives of the lawsuit: establishment of new boundary line for the poverty areas, and “a more equitable distribution of poverty funds,” particularly to the elderly poor and to poor residents living outside the poverty areas. The suit accused city and federal officials with failure to act “on the numerous studies and reports which have detailed abusive and discriminatory practices” in the program.

Noting that the new Koch Administration has announced plans to revamp the poverty program, the lawsuit said implementation of the Feb. 28 election date would have an “inhibitory effect” on such plans for reform. Schick said the CSA knew about the “abuses” and yet “has pressured city officials to conduct the elections and to maintain thereby” such abuses.

Bernstein said Koch had formally requested the CSA to postpone the elections and that his request was rejected. Bernstein said Judge Platt had instructed the two sides not only to file the required depositions by the schedule he had set, but that he also urged an effort to settle the dispute out of court. Bernstein said the CSA “might have a change of heart” and that “some talks” had been held.

Two of the community corporations, those of Crown Heights and Williamsburg, have substantial Jewish representation on their boards and that of the Lower East Side has “a few Jews” on its board. Otherwise, Jews are largely absent from the boards of the community corporations, which distribute federal funds to delegate agencies which do the actual spending for anti-poverty projects.