NYC Nonprofit Leader Wins $200K To Expand Faith-Based Homeless Shelters

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — In 2020, the pandemic forced dozens of small-scale homeless shelters inside houses of worship across the city to close, many of which never reopened.

But that could soon change. Upper West Sider and nonprofit leader Isaac Adlerstein won a $200,000 grant from the David Prize this fall to bring shelters and other critical homeless services into more houses of worship across New York City.

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Adlerstein, who leads Broadway Community as its executive director, said the effort grew out of the nonprofit's own model.

"Our mission is really to be a bridge from crisis to stability for whoever walks through our doors," Adlerstein told Patch.

Broadway Community operates a 19-bed shelter and a food pantry, soup kitchen, medical care, and case management site out of Broadway Presbyterian Church in Morningside Heights on West 114th Street and Broadway. Adlerstein estimates that nearly 2,000 people are helped annually by Broadway Community.

This June, the nonprofit opened a seven-bed shelter at Ansche Chesed on West 100th Street and West End Avenue on the Upper West Side.

Adlerstein said he is hoping to scale the project to 50 house of worship-based shelters and 21 service centers, using the funds from the prize, which awards $200,000 to five New Yorkers with "ideas for extraordinary change" per year.

"If we're able to empower those spaces to offer case management or housing navigation or employment assistance, we could really change the system at large," he said.

At Ansche Chesed, the synagogue provides space, volunteers and meals while seven people stay regularly as they work toward permanent housing.

This partnership with Ansche Chesed has raised Broadway Community's nightly shelter capacity from 19 people to 26.

"For those seven people, it is invaluable," Adlerstein said. "They have a place to sleep every night. They can count on dinner and breakfast. They can count on being in a calm and safe space where they work with kind and compassionate volunteers."

Adlerstein's work with people experiencing homelessness began back in high school.

While commuting from Long Island to Manhattan, he carried cash and granola bars to give to people asking for help, and later volunteered at a soup kitchen in Hempstead, before beginning his career in the nonprofit sector.

"I was really just distraught to see how many people were in need, and it shook me to my core that thousands of people could just walk by while there were folks that were asking for help," Adlerstein said. "I really have found my calling in this work, and I'm so glad that I'm able to do it full time and in a professional capacity."

With the $200,000 grant, Adlerstein said he plans to step back from the daily operations of Broadway Community's shelter system and put his full energy toward determining how and where to replicate the model.

Early conversations about opening small-scale shelters are underway with a Quaker meeting house downtown and a Bronx congregation, as well as several Upper West Side congregations, he said.

"If we're able to make it not the exception that a house of worship shelters people, but the norm, then I think the sky is truly the limit," Adlerstein said.

For questions, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.