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The search for Jewish rescuers

3/31/2017

B'nai B'rith International honored Berta Davidovitz Rubinsztejn (right) with the Jewish Rescuers Citation in 2014.
During the time of Nazi occupation in Budapest, Rubinsztejn, only in her early 20's at the time, became a hero
and mother for Jewish children that would have otherwise perished in the Holocaust.
On the left is Meir Brand, one of the children she rescued.

Nearly 15 years ago, the World Center proposed a resolution to the 2003 B’nai B’rith International Board of Governors meeting that convened in Baltimore calling on the organization to honor Jewish Holocaust rescuers. The resolution that past read “BE IT RESOLVED THAT B’nai B’rith International authorizes the B’nai B’rith World Center to engage in identifying and honoring Jews who performed extraordinary actions to save other Jews during the Holocaust, and asks that they further define the scope of any involvement and activity by B’nai B’rith International.”

Over the years since that resolution, the search for Jewish Holocaust-era rescuers has become a major area of activity for the World Center and a personal passion.

In order to properly honor those heroes, the World Center and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust—of which the World Center is a founding member—launched their joint “Jewish Rescuers Citation,” through which some 170 Jewish heroes have been recognized for their courageous actions rescuing Jews across Europe during the Holocaust.

One of the modus operandi of the citation is that it must be presented to the rescuer him or herself or, in the case that the rescuer is no longer alive, to a relative.

Sometimes, this condition is difficult to meet, particularly in the case of some of the more obscure rescue efforts.

One such effort is the case of Dr. Asaf Atchildi, a medical doctor born into the Jadir community of Samarkand—a religious community of Jewish origin, originally forced into accepting the Muslim faith for the sake of appearance. Atchildi found himself in Paris during the German occupation, attending to the Juguts—Jews of Bukharian origin in France. With the assistance of Georgian expatriate politicians living in France, an Iranian diplomat and other players, Dr. Atchildi succeeded in building a web of contacts and relationships among the German and French bureaucracy that ensured the survival of the Jugut community and other non-Jugut Jews who were surreptitiously added to the list of Juguts. Atchildi, who, at his wife’s urging never registered as being Jewish, was in constant danger of being found out and deported.

Our committee had no doubt that the now deceased doctor deserved the Jewish Rescuers Citation but we were unable to find a relative to receive it. We knew from testimony he gave to Yad Vashem that while in Paris he had two daughters. We could not find either in Israel or in Paris. I then resorted to the radio program “Search Bureau for Missing Relatives,” anchored by Izzy Mann, a B’nai B’rith World Center Journalism Award winner, who immediately promised to broadcast Atchildi’s fascinating story to garner information from the public at large and also to set loose his bevy of volunteer researchers to find Atchildi or his close kin. Izzy was able to find some significant leads to distant relatives in Israel and within three weeks these led to a breakthrough: we found Dr. Atchildi’s one surviving daughter, Dora Aftergood (90), at the Jewish age home in Vancouver and her son David in Calgary. B’nai B’rith Canada has agreed to stage a major event to present the citation posthumously to Dr. Atchild—closing the circle opened 70 years earlier when he ensured the survival of over 300 Bukharian and other Jews in occupied France.

The World Center remains committed to this important project that helps discredit the mistaken notion that Jews did nothing to rescue fellow Jews during the Holocaust and that the notion of Jewish solidarity was nowhere to be found during those terrible times.

Alan Schneider is the director of B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem, which serves as the hub of B'nai B'rith International activities in Israel. The World Center is the key link between Israel and B'nai B'rith members and supporters around the world. To view some of his additional content, Click Here.

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Guest Blog: Shabbat, Purim, Israeli Baseball, and More in Japan

3/28/2017

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B'nai B'rith International volunteer Jason Jangsner recently traveled to Japan with the B'nai B'rith Young Leadership Network as a part of the Kakehashi Project. The project is a program created by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is designed to promote positive relations between the country of Japan and young people around the globe.

Langsner shared his experiences in a blog post for GatherDC. You can scroll down to read it, or click the button below to read it on GatherDC.org.

Read on GatherDC.org

Although still, a bit jet lagged from a 12+ hour flight, I wanted to share my recent experience as a participant in a young Jewish American delegation to Japan.

For over five years I have been involved in B’nai B’rith International and its Young Leadership Network (BBYLN). B’nai B’rith is an organization that advocates for Global Jewry and human rights. I was recently invited with 11 other Jewish leaders from around the U.S. to be a part of the second #BBYLNinJPN cohort for the KAKEHASHI Project – a program of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs – that aims to build bridges for the future and create deeper mutual understanding between the people of Japan and the U.S.

KAKEHASHI will bring 5,100 people to Japan this year. I was honored to be one of them. Fellow Jewish leaders from Chicago, Denver, Detroit, New York, and South Florida joined me on this trip. We visited Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kobe from March 5-12, 2017, and learned a great deal about the history, economy, culture, and policy priorities of Japan. We were a part of the second delegation of BBYLN volunteers to be invited to Japan on KAKEHASHI.

After departing from Tokyo’s Narita Airport, the delegation and our Japanese guides started the week off at an authentic Japanese dinner – where we were instructed to take our shoes off and sit on pillows in front of our plated dinners. Our feast included miso soup, sashimi, chicken yakitori, pickled vegetables, and more.

As Jewish Americans representing B’nai B’rith International—the Jewish community’s oldest humanitarian and human rights advocacy organization— the program focused on the Jewish Community in Japan.The Japanese Jewish community is made up of about 1,000 people.The community includes American, European, and Israeli ex-pats who now live/work in Japan; as-well-as a very small percentage of native Japanese who identify as Jewish. We were invited to Shabbat services and dinner with members of the Jewish Community Center of Tokyo which is made up of 100 families. While on our trip we met the Chabad Rabbi and visited his synagogue in Kobe, and some members of our delegation joined the Tokyo Chabad community for a megillah reading on Purim.

We met with the number two ranking diplomat in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the former Japanese Ambassador to Israel, and the Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Israel in Japan. We learned that Jewry in Japan pre-existed WWII, but it was small. The city of Kobe, which had a small but vibrant Jewish community before the war. In the early-1940s, Japan helped to save the lives of thousands of Jews from Poland and Lithuania by offering them temporary travel visas. A Japanese Diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania, Chiune Siguhara, from that time is named one of the Righteous of the Gentiles in Yad Vashem for this act of humanity in writing over 2,100 visas and saving 6,000 lives. Each visa authorized a Jewish family to leave Eastern Europe and travel to Japan temporarily. We visited Japan’s Holocaust Education Center in Fukuyama and were serenaded by Israeli songs, in Hebrew, by local members of the Fukuyama community.

And yes, we did make it to a Team Israel baseball game in the Tokyo Dome where we joined in the chorus of Hatikivah before the game – a memory that none of us will soon forget!

Beyond the exposure to the Japanese Jewish community and the important triangular ties between the U.S.-Japan-Israel, we also learned a great deal about Japanese history and culture. We spoke with a survivor of Hiroshima and visited the site where the atomic bomb was dropped, met with the CEO of a Japanese company, had dinner with young Japanese entrepreneurs, visited numerous historic sites, toured a Sake brewery, and some of us – who weren’t allergic – visited a cat café during our free time.

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Medicaid: Providing Vital Health Care to Seniors

3/27/2017

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Medicaid is a cooperative, means-tested health care program that currently provides health care coverage to 6.9 million people who are aged 65 or older. It was created in 1965 to deliver medical care to various low-income populations such as people 65 and older, children, adults and people with chronic disabling conditions. Because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), states have the option to expand Medicaid eligibility for people under the age of 65 with income up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL).

Presently, Medicaid funding comes from the federal and state governments, with the federal government obligated to pay a pre-determined share of a state’s Medicaid costs. The federal government’s pre-determined share varies by state, however averages 57 percent. Under the current Medicaid matching structure, federal funding fluctuates in concert with the health care needs of the individual states. The current policy furthers Medicaid’s central goal by giving beneficiaries the security of a health care safety net.

Low-income seniors have greatly benefited from the Medicaid program. For example, since Medicaid states sometimes fills coverage gaps on dental, vision and hearing services Medicare does not cover, seniors are able to receive care they could not cover on their own. In addition, low-income seniors are aided in the cost sharing and out of pocket costs in their Medicare coverage. Many seniors depend on Medicaid to cover the cost-sharing in Medicare—without this coverage they would not be able to afford co-payments and would skip needed care.

In addition, Medicaid helps seniors with long-term services and supports (LTSS) by providing funding for such senior health care services like nursing facilities. In 2015, the median nursing facility annual cost was $91,250, which exceeds what most elderly people and their families can afford. Because Medicare financing for LTSS is limited, Medicaid has been a critical to rounding out funding so low-income seniors can receive the appropriate long-term health care services.

Recently, Congress had seriously considered the American Health Care Act (AHCA) as legislation to repeal and replace the ACA. While Congress was unable to pass the AHCA it is important to examine how this proposed legislation would have impacted Medicaid. Specifically, Congress was deliberating on whether to change Medicaid to a per capita cap financing structure between the federal government and the states. Under a per capita cap, federal spending on the Medicaid program would have been capped on a per-beneficiary basis. While the AHCA exempted Medicaid aid for low-income Medicare beneficiaries from the per capita cap proposal, changing any portion of the Medicaid funding to a per capita cap proposal would have added an additional layer of pressure to state budgets, and put the health care and financial security of millions of older adults at risk. For instance, a per capita cap proposal could have drastically decreased the amount of federal financing available for states to pay for nursing facilities.

From 2015 to 2035, the number of low-income older adults is expected to rise from 15 million to 27 million people. Proposals that cap the federal government’s financial responsibility will put an increasing amount of Medicaid beneficiaries at risk when they need more care as they age. State Medicaid programs operating under a fixed federal contribution could face the daunting choice of finding billions of additional dollars in their own budgets or being forced to offer even more limited health care access to their most vulnerable low-income seniors.

Evan Carmen, Esq. is the Assistant Director for Aging Policy at the B’nai B’rith International Center for Senior Services. He holds a B.A. from American University in political science and a J.D. from New York Law School. Prior to joining B’nai B’rith International he worked in the Office of Presidential Correspondence for the Obama White House, practiced as an attorney at Covington and Burling, LLP, worked as an aide for New York City Council Member Tony Avella and interned for Congressman Gary Ackerman’s office. Click here to read more from Evan Carmen.

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Israel and Latin America at the U.N.: A Difficult Relationship

3/23/2017

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Caracas, Venezuela.
Venezuela leads the Latin American "neo-communist" bloc when voting at the U.N. and is dangerously close to Iran.

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There are areas in which the United Nations has not lived up to the values enshrined in its charter. And in no area is this more visible than in the treatment that this institution gives to the State of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Israel is criticized at the U.N. more than the world's most atrocious regimes. Much more than Syria, where dictator Bashar al-Assad killed thousands of his own citizens with chemical weapons; much more than North Korea, where people are subject to enslavement, torture, rape and persecution; much more than the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has the worst rates of abuse against women and girls; and much more than Iran, which hangs its homosexuals and murders its dissidents, in addition to being the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.

The U.N.'s obsession with Israel has reached absurd levels, as exemplified by UNESCO's adoption, a few months ago, of resolutions ignoring the Jewish people's ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the most sacred sites for Judaism.

In 2016, the U.N. General Assembly passed 20 resolutions condemning Israel and only six on the rest of the world combined, which is really scandalous. This absurd spectacle is possible due to the automatic majority that the sponsors of these resolutions can get among the diplomats that populate the UN building in New York.

Of all the anti-Israel resolutions passed every year by the General Assembly, three are particularly harmful as they re-authorize, year after year, the financing of:

The Division on Palestinian Rights (DPR)—the Palestinians are the only people in the world who have their own division within the Department of Political Affairs of the UN Secretariat)
The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP)
The Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arab Inhabitants in the Occupied Territories (SCIIHRP)

The main goal of these three entities is to demonize the State of Israel and to question its very right to exist.

In fact, it was at one of the conferences organized by CEIRPP in 2005 in Paris, where an effort began to recruit NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) willing to work on a global campaign of boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The ultimate goal of the BDS movement is not to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians but to end the existence of the Jewish state, something that clearly contradicts the principles of the U.N. Charter.

And yet, all this harmful anti-Israel propaganda is done in the name of the U.N., is funded by the U.N. and is disseminated through the U.N.'s public information system.

Fortunately, some important voices are beginning to speak up against this injustice.

In his last address to the U.N. Security Council, former Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon denounced the disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel that the U.N. has produced for decades.

Most significantly, Nikki Haley, the new U.S. representative to the U.N., strongly criticized the U.N. Security Council’s animosity towards Israel after her first meeting at this body. Haley rightfully described how a Middle East meeting focused almost exclusively on Israel, instead of addressing the region's most pressing issues, such as Hezbollah's illegal operations in Lebanon, Iran's provision of weapons to terrorists, the need to defeat ISIS and the measures that should be taken against Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

The countries of Latin America have pretty poor records when it comes to their votes at the General Assembly on Israel-related resolutions. In 2016, the United States and Canada voted “against” 18 anti-Israel resolutions. This is how the countries of Latin America voted on those same resolutions:

The countries that make up what we call the Latin American "neo-communist bloc" (that is, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador) voted “in favor” of all of them, and so did Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.

Costa Rica and Uruguay voted for 17; Argentina and Mexico for 16; Colombia and Peru for 15; Guatemala for 14; Panama for 11; Honduras for 5; and Paraguay for 4.

With regard to the three most harmful resolutions, the picture is a little more encouraging. The votes in 2016 divided as follows:

Guatemala voted against the three important resolutions, something unprecedented in Latin America and truly commendable.

Honduras voted against one of these resolutions and abstained on the other two.

Colombia, Panama, Paraguay and Peru abstained on all three (in the case of Paraguay, it is important to highlight its general record since, like Honduras; it abstains on almost all anti-Israel resolutions).

Mexico abstained in two and voted for one (this was a step in the right direction since Mexico used to vote in favor of two).

Argentina, Costa Rica and Uruguay abstained on one and voted for two (as in previous years).

And finally, the neo-communist bloc (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador) plus Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador voted in favor of all three.

It’s worth noting that Chile is the only case in which we can confidently say that its U.N. votes are a reflection of the country's outlook on Israel (which is heavily influenced by its large community of Palestinian descent). In all the other cases, the votes on Israel reflect the countries' general political outlook: the closer they are to the neo-communist bloc (which under the leadership of Venezuela has become dangerously close to Iran in recent years), the more they are inclined to vote against Israel.

In this context, it is to be expected that the new governments of the region (many of whom are moving away from populism and showing greater respect for democratic values, as is the cases of Argentina and Brazil) begin to reconsider many of the votes that their diplomats cast at the U.N.

In many cases, there is a tendency among diplomats to keep voting in the same way year after year. This is why it is crucial to alert these new governments on the importance of the anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N., so that they can give appropriate instructions to their ambassadors and make sure their votes truly reflect the country's position on these important issues.

español

Hay ámbitos en los que la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (O.N.U.) no ha vivido de acuerdo a los valores consagrados en su carta fundacional. Y en ningún ámbito es esto más visible que en el trato que esta institución le da al Estado de Israel, la única verdadera democracia en Oriente Medio.

Israel es criticado en la O.N.U. más que los regímenes más atroces del mundo. Mucho más que Siria, en donde el dictador Bashar al-Assad asesino a miles de sus propios ciudadanos con armas químicas; mucho más que Corea del Norte, en donde muchas personas son sometidas a esclavitud, tortura, violación o persecución; mucho más que la República Democrática del Congo, que tiene las peores tasas de abuso contra mujeres y niñas; y mucho más que Irán, que cuelga a sus homosexuales y asesina a sus disidentes, además de ser el mayor patrocinador estatal de terrorismo del mundo.

La obsesión de las Naciones Unidas con Israel ha alcanzado niveles absurdos, como lo demuestra la adopción por parte de la UNESCO, hace unos meses, de resoluciones que ignoran los lazos del pueblo judío con el Monte del Templo y el Muro Occidental, los sitios más sagrados para el judaísmo.

En 2016, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas aprobó 20 resoluciones sobre Israel y sólo seis sobre el resto del mundo, lo que es realmente escandaloso. Este absurdo espectáculo es posible debido a la mayoría automática que los patrocinadores de estas resoluciones pueden conseguir entre los diplomáticos que pueblan el edificio de la O.N.U. en Nueva York.

De todas las resoluciones anti-israelíes aprobadas cada año por la Asamblea General, tres son particularmente perjudiciales, ya que re-autorizan, año tras año, el financiamiento de:

La División de Derechos Palestinos (DPR), los palestinos son el único pueblo del mundo que tiene su propia división dentro del Departamento de Asuntos Políticos de la Secretaría de la O.N.U.)
El Comité para el Ejercicio de los Derechos Inalienables del Pueblo Palestino (CEIRPP)
El Comité Especial Encargado de Investigar las Prácticas Israelíes que Afectan a los Derechos Humanos del Pueblo Palestino y de otros Habitantes Árabes en los Territorios Ocupados (SCIIHRP)

El objetivo principal de estas tres entidades es demonizar el Estado de Israel y cuestionar su derecho a existir.

De hecho, fue en una de las conferencias organizadas por CEIRPP, en 2005 en París, en donde se comenzó a reclutar ONGs dispuestas a trabajar en una campaña global de boicots, desinversiones y sanciones contra Israel. El objetivo final del movimiento BDS no es mejorar las condiciones de vida de los palestinos sino poner fin a la existencia del Estado judío, algo que contradice claramente los principios de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas.

Y sin embargo, toda esta propaganda anti-Israelí se hace en nombre de la O.N.U., se financia con fondos de la O.N.U., y se difunde a través del sistema de información pública de la O.N.U.

Afortunadamente, algunas voces importantes están empezando a hablar en contra de esta injusticia.

En su último discurso ante el Consejo de Seguridad de la O.N.U., el ex Secretario General Ban Ki Moon denunció el número desproporcionado de resoluciones, informes y comités contra Israel que la O.N.U. ha producido durante décadas.

Asimismo, Nikki Haley, la nueva representante de los Estados Unidos ante la O.N.U., criticó enérgicamente la animosidad del Consejo de Seguridad hacia Israel después de su primera reunión en este organismo. Haley describió con razón cómo una reunión sobre Oriente Medio se centró casi exclusivamente en Israel, en lugar de abordar los asuntos más apremiantes de la región, como las operaciones ilegales de Hezbollah en el Líbano, la provisión de armas por parte de Irán a terroristas, la necesidad de derrotar a ISIS y las medidas que deberían tomarse contra Bashar al-Assad en Siria.

Los países de América Latina tienen un récord bastante pobre en lo que se refiere a sus votos en la Asamblea General, cuando se trata de resoluciones relacionadas con Israel. En 2016, Estados Unidos y Canadá votaron "en contra" de 18 resoluciones anti-Israelíes. Los países de América Latina votaron de la siguiente manera (teniendo en consideración esas mismas 18 resoluciones):

Los países que componen lo que llamamos el "bloque neo-comunista" de América Latina (es decir, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua y Ecuador) votaron "a favor" de todas ellas, al igual que Brasil, Chile, la República Dominicana y El Salvador.

Costa Rica y Uruguay votaron por 17, Argentina y México por 16, Colombia y Perú por 15, Guatemala por 14, Panamá por 11, Honduras por 5 y Paraguay por 4.

Con respecto a las tres resoluciones más perjudiciales, el panorama es un poco más alentador. Los votos en 2016 se dividieron de la siguiente forma:

Guatemala votó en contra de las tres resoluciones importantes, algo sin precedentes en América Latina y verdaderamente encomiable.

Honduras votó en contra de una de estas resoluciones y se abstuvo en las otras dos.

Colombia, Panamá, Paraguay y Perú se abstuvieron en las tres (en el caso de Paraguay, es importante destacar su récord general, ya que, al igual que Honduras, se abstiene en casi todas las resoluciones anti-Israelíes).

México se abstuvo en dos y votó a favor de una (lo que significó un cambio positivo ya que México solía votar a favor de dos).

Argentina, Costa Rica y Uruguay se abstuvieron en una y votaron a favor de dos (como en años anteriores).

Finalmente, el bloque neo-comunista (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua y Ecuador) más Brasil, Chile, la República Dominicana y El Salvador votaron a favor de las tres.

Vale la pena señalar que Chile es el único caso en el que podemos afirmar con seguridad que sus votos de la O.N.U. son un reflejo de la posición que el país tiene con respecto a Israel (la que esta fuertemente influenciada por su gran comunidad local de ascendencia palestina). En todos los demás casos, los votos sobre Israel reflejan la perspectiva política general de los países: cuanto más cerca están del bloque neo-comunista (que bajo la dirección de Venezuela se ha acercado peligrosamente a Irán en los últimos años), mayor es su inclinación a votar en contra de Israel.

En este contexto, es de esperarse que los nuevos gobiernos de la región (muchos de los cuales se han alejado de los populismos de izquierda y están mostrando un mayor respeto por los valores democráticos, como es el caso de Argentina y Brasil) comiencen a reconsiderar muchos de los votos que sus representantes emiten en la O.N.U.

En muchos casos, existe una tendencia entre los diplomáticos a seguir votando de la misma manera año tras año. Por eso es fundamental alertar a estos nuevos gobiernos sobre la importancia de las resoluciones anti-Israelíes en las Naciones Unidas, de manera que puedan dar instrucciones a sus embajadores y asegurarse de que sus votos reflejen verdaderamente la posición del país en estas importantes cuestiones.

Adriana Camisar, is an attorney by training who holds a graduate degree in international law and diplomacy from The Fletcher School (Tufts University). She has been B'nai B'rith International Special Advisor on Latin American Affairs since late 2008. In 2013 she relocated to Argentina, her native country. Prior to joining B'nai B'rith International, she worked as a research assistant to visiting Professor Luis Moreno Ocampo (former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court), at Harvard University; interned at the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs; worked at a children's rights organization in San Diego, Calif.; and worked briefly as a research assistant to the Secretary for Legal Affairs at the Organization of American States (OAS). To view some of her additional content, Click Here.

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An Open Letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson on Affordable Senior Housing

3/16/2017

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Dear Secretary Carson,

On behalf of B’nai B’rith International, its members, supporters and more than 8,000 residents of B'nai B'rith sponsored HUD assisted rental units; I want to welcome you as the newest secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). I hope that it brings you pride to oversee a department whose responsibility to the greater population is shaped by extending opportunity to low-income Americans.

I’m sure you are beginning to become familiar with the ways in which HUD assistance houses over 10 million individuals. This, of course, is carried out via public housing (rental housing for over 1 million low-income families, the elderly, and those with disabilities), multifamily subsidized housing (which includes Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, the Congregate Housing Services Program, and Section 811 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program) and housing vouchers (Section 8 project-based or tenant-based rent vouchers for low-income individuals, families, the elderly and the disabled). In addition, properties are often financed or assisted financially through the FHA insurance loan programs and low-income housing tax credits.

Five HUD programs provide affordable rental housing that is designated for low-income senior households. Section 202 provides housing exclusively for older adults and people with disabilities, while four other HUD programs provide housing for all age groups but have devoted the property to housing senior residents. These include Section 236 and Section 221 (d)(3) programs, public housing and project-based Section 8 programs dedicated primarily for use by senior households. After the Section 202 program, project-based Section 8 housing provides the most housing dedicated specifically to elderly households.

As you become more familiar with how HUD works to combat poverty for individuals and families all over our country using a modest portion of the federal budget, I want to bring your attention to the estimated 2 million seniors, most often low-income single women in their mid-70s to early-80s, who are housed through HUD subsidies or call HUD-assisted facilities home. HUD, a department that long ago began prioritizing the well-being of our most vulnerable seniors, has wavered in recent years on its commitment to take care of the oldest among our nation’s poor. I have the privilege of working directly with residents and staff of our 38 low-income supportive senior housing facilities, housing about 8,000 seniors across the country. Working with these buildings has transformed my understanding of what HUD-supportive housing is, and of who lives there. One thing has become particularly clear: We must include seniors in all of our conversations about publicly-funded housing.

I was disappointed that your remarks to the Senate Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs Committee did not include comments about affordable housing for seniors. However, I was pleased to read you indicated in your written responses to Sen. Sherrod Brown that the Section 202 program is “an important tool” for senior housing and that you will lobby President Trump for the inclusion of this vital program as part of a comprehensive infrastructure package. Across the spectrum of publicly-assisted housing, seniors are everywhere. Not only are they served by senior-specific programs, but they are a significant part of the population in every other category of HUD’s portfolio. Frankly, I am worried that within your focus on eliminating “government dependence,” you do not account that many people who benefit from HUD are retirees and disabled people whose incomes will never really improve, and whose need for housing assistance cannot be dismissed. Many of your statements spoke to the desire to get people off of public assistance and to move them towards gainful employment through a “development of innate talent” and “work requirements.” While economic success and independence are laudable goals to facilitate for the working poor, they are not realistic for fixed income older adults.

Many seniors living now in HUD assisted housing—who are in your terms “dependent” on it—have worked their entire lives and are still only able to afford housing by combining meager Social Security benefits with assistance from your department. While many of these individuals live in senior-specific facilities, about a third of households that make up public housing are senior-led homes or include a family member who is a senior. I believe it is important to remember that work should not be the sole focus when we discuss assisting those experiencing poverty. If we forget about the special needs required by millions of seniors who are now unable to work, we have committed a great injustice. I, and many senior housing advocates, believe the focus should instead be placed upon addressing the root causes of the shortage in affordable housing. We believe that accessing affordable housing is prevented by systematic issues including, but not limited to, predatory mortgage lending, a stagnant and unrepresentative COLA used for Social Security and astronomical price surges in many areas where seniors hoped to “age in place” due to gentrifying neighborhoods.

I am encouraged to know that you will be able to apply a health perspective on housing, because good health outcomes are incompatible with unstable or inappropriate housing. Further, housing can be a platform for prevention and early health intervention services. I look forward to the integration of your medical knowledge into your approach to HUD programs and hope that you will ensure “aging in place” and preventative care are tenets of your leading this department. Research tells us that ensuring the well-being of an aging person while they are healthy or maintaining a chronic condition prevents hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent at the end of that individual’s life. We know that these end-of-life prices surges can occur through Medicaid funded nursing home care or through receiving emergency medical services. We also know that this can be prevented when folks are able to “age in place” with comfort and dignity. More so, those in the supportive housing industry know that co-location of services and housing is crucial to maintaining one’s health as they age. Affordable, supportive housing not only allows people access to “healthy” aging, but helps people avoid injuries and unnecessary nursing home placements.

I think it’s only fair that a society be judged on the way it takes care of its oldest members. While we experience a growing population of seniors who are currently 75 years of age and older, the senior population, those aged 65 and over, is projected to double by the year 2030, from 35 million to 71.5 million. In 2010, more than 44,000 people aged 65 and over were homeless. In many ways, I am saddened our country has not done a better job of creating and preserving housing for older adults. However, I hope that I can appeal to you, as a man of faith, that we lift up and support our older neighbors who face significant financial barriers, and deserve a warm place to call home!

While I hope you will take my concerns to heart, I would love nothing more than for you to visit any of the 38 senior housing facilities my organization, B’nai B’rith International, sponsors across the United States from Maryland to California. We hope that a visit from you to any of our thriving communities would serve as a fact-gathering mission and support the good work that you will be leading!

Sincerely,
Breana Clark, MSW

Breana Clark is a Program Associate for the B’nai B’rith Center for Senior Services.

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The search for Jewish rescuers

Guest Blog: Shabbat, Purim, Israeli Baseball, and More in Japan

Medicaid: Providing Vital Health Care to Seniors

Israel and Latin America at the U.N.: A Difficult Relationship

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