By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — The chief executive officer of Jewish Family Service of San Diego estimates that between 10 and 20 percent of the Jews who live in San Diego County are at or below the poverty line. To help them, and any other Jew in need, JFS has created a culturally-competent Center for Jewish Care, reports Michael Hopkins, the JFS CEO. Currently, the center has three fulltime staff members, but according to Carole Yellen, JFS senior director of strategic partnerships, that number may soon be doubled.
News media often have reported on the work that JFS does to help migrant families who are brought to them by the Border Patrol and ICE. The asylum seekers are given COVID-19 tests, housed and fed in hotel rooms for an average of three days, and helped to obtain commercial transportation to American cities where their relatives or sponsors live. Additionally, JFS helps find local furnished apartments for refugees from various countries who have been formally admitted to this country by immigration authorities.
The media also has reported frequently on the JFS program to provide safe overnight parking as well as food and bathroom facilities at four locations in the county for homeless people who live in their cars. Similar media attention has been paid to the agency’s 10 a.m to 1 p.m. drive-through food distribution programs Monday through Friday, as well as to its transportation programs for seniors.
Hopkins says 90 percent of the beneficiaries of Jewish Family Service programs are not Jewish. Amid such publicity, the JFS board and senior staff want to make certain that the agency’s 103-year-old mission of helping needy members of the Jewish community is not overlooked.
“I think there is a myth in the community — much like such other types of issues like substance abuse, mental illness, and homelessness — that poverty doesn’t impact our Jewish community, but the reality is that we experience it at the same rate as our general community,” Yellen said. And that, Yellen added, “has been exacerbated every moment of the pandemic.”
As an example of services that JFS provides, Yellen told of “a family of eight up in North County” who “contracted COVID and were unable to continue to work. The husband lost his job, and they needed food immediately, but they weren’t even able to go to the store to get it. So, we were able to access our home delivery program that typically we use for older adults, and get that funding to make sure that they had meals until they recovered from COVID and were able to start shopping for themselves at the grocery store.”
“Likewise,” Yellen said, “we help people who are in need of housing” via the agency’s “navigator website.” JFS helps people to “meet with prospective landlords and roommates and see the places where we are able to get them housed.” In the future, the agency may take an even more hands-on approach towards meeting the housing crisis, Hopkins said. Under study is a plan for JFS to own and operate affordable and subsidized housing.
The three staff members so-far assigned to the Center for Jewish Care are called “resource navigators” because much of their work to help solve clients’ problems involves identifying resources already offered by government, Jewish or other non-profit agencies. “The Jewish community may be bringing specific needs that our resource navigators will be able to address with their cultural competency — whether that be a need for kosher food, end-of-life decisions, burial, or bereavement,” Yellen said.
Hopkins said the resource navigators can alert those in need to such resources as Hebrew Free Loan of San Diego and the Jewish Community Emergency Response Fund.
“We have served within the last fiscal year about 170 individuals but we recognize that there are more in need because of COVID — people who have lost their jobs,” Yellen said. “It will take a while for the impact of the pandemic to ease. We don’t see people coming to us one month and then becoming stable; they are really coming to us for a longer time.”
JFS helps clients arrange for financial assistance, food deliveries, unemployment benefits, and also tries “to make sure they are accessing the full amount of resources,” Yellen said.
In meeting needs of the community, JFS collaborates regularly with such other Jewish agencies as the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego, and Hebrew Free Loan. “For example,” said Yellen, “Jewish Federation has a job board on its website. We look at that as a potential place to send people, and maybe in the future we will be able to expand that. We are looking to figure out if there are landlords in town who have units available, if there are employers who have jobs available, if there are professionally skilled people like dentists who might be able to offer services pro bono, no matter where a Jewish individual may need help.”
To reach the “resource navigators” at the Center for Jewish Care, one may utilize the Jewish Community Access Line via (858) 637-3018.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com