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 It’s the Goddard Riverside Community Center. The emphasis in the name should be placed on the word “community”. Goddard Riverside was created through the merger of two very old settlement houses, each with historic roots that were displaced by an evolving urban landscape. Goddard Neighborhood Center was on the East Side where NYU Medical Center now stands.
Sidebar
Options Center
Riverside Community House ultimately made way for the creation of Lincoln Center. In 1959, the two joined forces and relocated to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The new agency soon found itself in the middle of a community going through its own upheaval.
“It was a little different then,” says Stephan Russo, who joined the agency as a youth worker in 1976 and has been Executive Director since 1998. During the 1950s and 60s, the Upper West Side was a significantly poorer neighborhood, with large populations of low income and minority families living in seriously deteriorating housing stock. The community could easily have been destined for the same type of “bulldoze and build” style of urban renewal that had already displaced 7,000 poor families from Lincoln Square. Instead, New York City designated the 20 square blocks from West 86th to West 96th between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue as the West Side Urban Renewal Area. And, there was a new strategy – to preserve what could be saved, both buildings and the people who lived in them. The stated goal was to create an “urban environment truly integrated (economically, culturally, and ethnically) on a stable basis.”
The development process may not always have gone exactly as planned. However, the City’s efforts did help to create a remarkably diverse community. Despite a median household income of approximately $100,000 annually, almost 10% of Manhattan Community District 7 residents live below the poverty level. The Upper West Side is home to both a significant slice of the City’s artistic and business elite, and more than 5,000 units of public housing, many more low- and moderate-income apartments and a large concentration of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels.
Right from the start, the West Side transformation presented myriad community needs and challenges for the new Goddard Riverside Community Center. The agency served both the existing poor and low-income community, working with kids, families, and seniors. It soon was confronted with an additional range of housing-related issues as families and individuals were displaced either by the urban renewal process itself or subsequent forces of gentrification and real estate speculation. In response, the agency took on a strong advocacy role on behalf of the more vulnerable residents of its community – a powerful tradition within the settlement house movement.
“Goddard Riverside is not just a list of programs,” says Russo. “We are driven more by an idea of the kind of world we want to create and how to make those changes. There is an underlying philosophy about social and economic justice.”
Goddard Riverside offers a broad range of services to meet the varying needs of community residents. Its 27 different programs assist more than 17,000 people each year. The agency divides these into several broad service categories: Families, Youth and Teens; College Access and Training; Older Adults; Homeless Adults; Housing; and Community Resources and Advocacy Services. Goddard Riverside’s primary geographic focus is from 59th to 110th streets. In recent years, however, the agency has opened two residential programs in Harlem and now serves as the lead agency for homeless outreach for the entire borough of Manhattan.
In June 2006, St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s Neighborhood Center became an affiliate of Goddard Riverside, and in February 2011 was officially merged into the agency. “It was another example of responding to the needs of the community,” says Russo. “We had been approached by St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s which had been having financial difficulties.” Just four blocks away from Goddard Riverside’s main office, the smaller settlement house operated a series of early childhood and youth programs, as well as Meals on Wheels. “At the end of the day, it was about whether we could save those programs and services that the community needed,” says Russo.
Families, Youth and Teens
Goddard Riverside serves more than 3,000 children and youth through school-based, after-school, evening and weekend programs.
Its early childhood services include five programs: two Head Start Centers, one on West 95th Street and the Escalera Head Start on West 87th Street and three Day Care Centers located on West 91st, West 84th, and West 83rd Streets. Each center uses the Creative Curriculum as a base for classroom activities that promote intellectual, social, emotional and physical growth through the hands-on exploration of science, nature and art.
Several of Goddard Riverside’s early childhood programs came through its merger with St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s. “We’re now much more involved in early childhood issues. This has given us an opportunity to work with many more families,” says Russo.
Goddard Riverside offers a variety of after-school, youth development, summer camp and recreational programs serving over 1,200 children and youth from Kindergarten through high school. One after-school program for elementary school children operates out of the Bernie Wohl Center at 647 Columbus Avenue, which is also home to a Summer Day Camp and several other community programs. Another operates at St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s on West. 84th. Goddard Riverside also hosts a Beacon program serving 909 youth and adults at the St. Joan Of Arc Middle School on West 93rd Street.
The Star Learning Center
The Star Learning Center, originally founded at St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s almost 50 years ago, is a natural fit with Goddard Riverside’s strong commitment to academic support and the importance of education for all youth in the community. Staffed almost entirely with volunteer tutors, the center currently serves 225 youngsters from 2nd through 12th grades.
“Each student is matched individually with a volunteer,” says program director Deena Hellman. “Tutors can be anything from 15-year-old high school students to 80-plus year-old retired people and everything in between.” The volunteers, who commit to work with their students for two hours per week, are recruited from a range of sources. “We send letters to all the private and public schools in the neighborhood and we have relationships with the colleges – Fordham, Columbia, NYU, Barnard. We also work with volunteer websites,” says Hellman.
In addition to interviewing and screening all volunteers, The Star Learning Center provides lots of support. “We do an individual test on every child to assess their grade levels and write a series of recommendations for the tutor,” says Hellman. Tutors also submit a report after each session which is reviewed and returned with suggestions about books to read, writing assignments, etc.
Matches can last anywhere from a few months to many years. “Our longest was a tutor who stayed with the same child from third through twelfth grades,” says Hellman.
“The only criteria is that the child come from a home with limited means,” says Hellman. “We don’t have the resources to provide tutoring for families who can afford to pay for tutors on their own.” Families do pay a modest registration fee of $60 each semester, although no child is ever turned away if they can’t.
Options Center
The hallmark of Goddard’s academic support services is its Options Center, which has helped thousands of students from all over New York City navigate the process of applying for college or other higher education, seeking financial aid, being admitted and making a successful transition to life on campus. As a result of Options’ demonstrated success, Goddard Riverside has replicated its program model with a number of community partners and has established a professional institute which provides trainings to counselors at schools and youth programs throughout the area. (See sidebar.)
Older Adults
Over 3,000 seniors participate in Goddard Riverside’s Senior Center and NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community) every year. The DFTA-funded Senior Center, which serves breakfast and lunch to approximately 250 members daily, is co-located in the Phelps House Residence, a 167-unit affordable housing development for seniors at West 88th Street and Columbus Avenue. Daily activities include art, exercise, choir, Spanish and English classes, along with trips to museums, health screenings, case management and legal assistance.
Meanwhile, Goddard’s NORC provides on-site services at three local Mitchell Lama co-operatives, helping hundreds of older neighbors live safely at home for as long as possible.
The Westside Ecumenical Ministry to the Elderly (WEME) Meals On Wheels program, another addition via the St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s merger, delivers more than 350 meals daily to frail and home-bound seniors.. When the City’s meals program was restructured in 2009 to have fewer contractors serving larger geographic areas, WEME joined a partnership, led by Encore Community Services, in order to continue serving the area from West 59th to 100th Streets between Riverside and Central Park West.
Homelessness
While many settlement houses and multi-service agencies offer programs for children, families and seniors, housing development and street outreach to the homeless are less common. For Goddard Riverside, once again, these were natural responses to emerging needs in the community.
“Homelessness became a very serious issue in the late ‘70s and ‘80s,” says Russo. “In our neighborhood, there were homeless people living in Central Park, Riverside Park and on the streets.”
Goddard Riverside established one of New York City’s first mobile street outreach teams in 1979. During the next three decades, it honed its ability to engage homeless and often seriously mentally-ill individuals, providing them with immediate food, shelter and assistance as well as medical and psychiatric care. Today, Goddard Riverside is the lead agency for the Manhattan Outreach Consortium, a collaboration of four nonprofits – Goddard Riverside, Center for Urban Community Services, Urban Pathways and Common Ground -- which provides homeless outreach for all of Manhattan.
During the day, Goddard Riverside’s own outreach team covers two of Manhattan’s seven catchment areas, 59th Street to 110th Street on the West Side including Central Park, and downtown Manhattan below Houston Street. At night, Goddard staff cover the entire borough. Outreach workers identify and contact homeless men and women – targeting chronic street dwellers – working on foot and in vans.
“We’re currently working with about 600 clients,” says Kristen Edwards, Director of the Outreach Consortium. “Some are living on the street; some are in transitional housing and some are in permanent housing.” Since the Consortium was launched in September 2007, it has helped almost 1,200 homeless people to transition from life on the streets to permanent housing. “We have a 93% retention rate for folks we’ve placed in permanent housing. We’re very proud of that,” says Edwards.
In addition to street outreach, Goddard Riverside operates a Safe Haven and Housing Options program where homeless individuals can find transitional housing, assistance with daily living skills, psychiatric and medical care, as well as counseling on a host of other issues and needs. Safe Haven includes 20 SRO units. Residents can also attend Goddard Riverside’s psychosocial program at The Other Place (TOP) or training for competitive employment at the TOP Opportunities job program.
Housing
While critically important, street outreach and transitional shelter are not solutions to homelessness. “The answer to homelessness is housing,” says Russo. “We realized that we were not doing a good enough job if we weren’t finding permanent housing.” Part of the battle for housing on the West Side has been stemming the loss of affordable housing options, including SROs, to high-income, luxury conversions.
In 1983, Goddard Riverside developed what was among the very first supportive housing programs in New York City when it purchased Capitol Hall together with the Settlement Housing Fund and the West 87th Street Block Association. A fully-occupied 202-unit SRO, the building had been targeted by developers for conversion to luxury housing which would have displaced the existing tenants. The project created new opportunities for homeless housing while also preserving and up-grading units for existing SRO residents.
Following on the success of Capitol Hall, Goddard Riverside went on to develop:
• Phelps House (1983), 167 units of HUD 202 affordable housing for seniors;
• The Senate (1988), 135-unit SRO supportive housing residence for formerly homeless adults, many with mental illness;
• The Corner House (1998), Goddard’s first supportive housing residence in West Harlem with 34 studio apartments for formerly homeless, mentally ill adults and elders from the community, and;
• West 140th Street (2005), 48-units of affordable, permanent supportive housing for homeless mentally ill adults, also in Harlem.
Goddard Riverside consolidated its pioneering role in New York City’s extraordinarily successful supportive housing movement in 1988 when it helped to form and house the SRO Provider Group, now better known as the Supportive Housing Network of New York.
In addition to actual housing development, Goddard Riverside helped establish its SRO Law Project in 1981 to preserve existing SRO housing and protect current SRO tenants from eviction and harassment. “We have both tenant organizers and lawyers,” says Program Director Marti Weithman. “We represent SRO tenants in housing court on a variety of issues, such as overcharges, harassment and repairs.” The project’s organizers work with groups of tenants in individual buildings around particular issues and on citywide campaigns, including the current battle against conversion of SROs into illegal tourist hotels. “We were formed to preserve SRO housing stock,” says Weithman. “Back in the 1980s, there were an estimated 165,000 SRO units in New York City. It’s decreased incredibly over the years. It could be as low as 30,000 units today.”
Advocacy
It’s not often that direct service provider agencies define advocacy as one of their core services. At Goddard Riverside, it is fundamental.
“We do not just offer services,” says Russo. “We join with our neighbors and work to tackle community issues.” He credits both the founders of the settlement house movement and his immediate predecessor, Bernie Wohl, for making community organizing and issues-oriented advocacy a priority.
“Bernie Wohl was the Executive Director for 26 years from 1972 to 1998,” says Russo. “He was, in many ways, the ideological founder of Goddard Riverside and moved it in the direction of advocacy. He was not afraid to have the agency standing out in front on really critical issues.”
Advocacy and community organizing is a major component in the SRO Law Project. It is even more important at the Family Council, a forum for advocacy and community education on local, state, and federal policy issues of concern to program participants, staff and the community as a whole. The Family Council was established in 1995 in response to the last major series of threats to human services funding. “We held a town hall meeting expecting a couple of people to show up,” says Larry Wood. “Instead, 300 people packed into the senior center. It was amazing.”
Ever since, Wood has worked with the Council as its full-time organizer. Inside Goddard Riverside, he works with a public issues committee at the senior center, job clubs at the youth programs, consumer councils at the housing and homeless programs, and parents committees at Head Start and early childhood programs. Externally, Wood coordinates with the major citywide advocacy groups -- United Neighborhood Houses, the Council of Senior Centers and Services, the Immigration Coalition, Neighborhood Family Services Coalition, the Real Rent Campaign, etc. He sees his role as a bridge; making sure that staff and clients know the budgetary issues that threaten services while also providing feedback from the grass roots on issues of concern to people at the front line of services. Whether it’s a City Hall press conference to battle budget cuts, an advocacy trip to Albany or a petition drive among seniors, the Family Council organizes Goddard Riverside’s advocacy effort.
In addition to major budgetary and legislative issues, Goddard Riverside has also been active in voicing concerns regarding City policies around the delivery of human services. Efforts to consolidate human service contracts, with a smaller number of provider agencies taking on bigger contracts, has been a recurring theme during the Bloomberg administration – and one which Russo finds troubling. “It cuts out the smaller, community-based agencies and forces us as nonprofits to focus more on satisfying government funders than on meeting the needs of our communities,” he says.
In the case of aging services, a system where smaller community-based agencies ran senior centers, provided case management and delivered meals locally was replaced by significantly larger, but separate, contracts for case management and meals delivery, each covering much larger geographic areas. The result, Russo argues, is a series of gaps through which vulnerable seniors can fall. “The city looked at us more as meal delivery vendor as opposed to a holistic community program that had taken years and years to develop.”
While Russo is certainly not the only nonprofit executive to express these concerns, Goddard Riverside may be the only agency which has undertaken a formal research study to document problems with the new system. During the 19 months following the DFTA reorganization, WEME Meals on Wheels saw 235 seniors, or 42% of its clients, dropped from the program. WEME also experienced a dramatic decline in new case referrals – from 30-40 new cases a month down to an average of four. In response, Goddard Riverside garnered several foundation grants to launch its Food Security for Older Adults Initiative – a study of what happened to the 235 discharged WEME clients. It found that 169 (72%) had been dropped from the meals program -- 73 under a regulation that made them ineligible because they had 20 or more hours of home care. The Goddard Riverside study found that 22 of these individuals still needed home delivered meals despite the home care services. One client, a 97-year-old woman with dementia, had lost 13 pounds after being cut from home delivered meals.
Goddard Riverside began providing meals to the 22, using its own funding, and ultimately won New York Times coverage for the issue. Today, the social worker leading this initiative has discovered even more frail elderly who are falling through the cracks and the agency is now delivering over 50 meals to those deemed ineligible by the City.
The City has used similar strategies in its search for economies of scale in other service areas. Despite winning the lead agency contract for the Manhattan Outreach Consortium, Russo finds the approach problematic. “We’ve had to bend ourselves into a pretzel just so we can continue serving people in our community,” he says. “We believe that human services are delivered most effectively and efficiently at the community level by organizations which know that community and are responsive to its needs.”
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