A new org dedicated to creating housing for adults with developmental disabilities and autism. First home in Teaneck set to be renovated; second home to close on purchase after Pesach.
It is with much simcha that I can finally announce in these pages the founding of a special new nonprofit, The Bayit Association of NJ. This new organization, which I and my co-founders, Adam Chill and Bassie Taubes, and our newest board member, Ronit Rubinoff, have been working together on now for two-plus years, will be dedicated to providing homes and housing solutions for the growing numbers of adults with special needs of all kinds in our community.
Concomitant with this news, I am also proud to announce both the purchase of the first home in Teaneck in early 2021 and the recent approval by Teaneck’s Board of Adjustment for the renovation plans. If all goes well with the permit process, the construction and our fundraising, this first home will open in 2023 and be a permanent, licensed group home for four adults from our community. I am also overjoyed to announce that we are currently under contract on a second home and looking to close on the purchase after Pesach.
What Is The Bayit Association? What Are Its Goals?
To provide the answers, allow me to take a step or two back in time. Three years ago, I published a column in this paper entitled “Where Will Our Child Live?”
In that column, I asked the question on the mind of so many parents in our situation. I wrote then: “Who will take care of our son Zev as my wife and I get older and after his siblings have moved out and moved on with their lives? … Our son needs a lot of help and support and will never be able to live truly independently. Will he get the same care and love he gets now? Can any agency or caretaker truly replace us, his parents? Will he live near us? Where is the best place for him and us? Also, at what age should we—and he—be looking to move out of our home?
“These questions above, and many others, plague all parents of teens and young adults with special needs. The answers aren’t always clear or easy, and some are simply unanswerable.”
I noted back then that as the Orthodox Jewish community in New Jersey has continued to grow, so have the needs of the growing numbers with special needs, autism and developmental disabilities. I explained then in my column how many parents with children like my now-20-year-old son, who will never be able to live independently, will need housing solutions for the long term. Some will need community residences/group homes and some will be independent enough to be able to live in supported apartments. I felt strongly then that we needed to find a way to bring Orthodox-affiliated housing solutions to our community.
At the end of my column, I asked interested families to sign up via a Google Sheets link if they had children between the ages of 13 and 35 who will likely need some form of housing in the near or medium term. At the time, I really wasn’t sure how many would respond to my piece. I just had a gut feeling the need was strong and growing but I didn’t really know. (BTW: That link is still live and active here—https://tinyurl.com/2p8tjfx9—if you want to fill it out or missed it a few years ago. View article: https://tinyurl.com/mry5xbns.)
Well, I was pretty shocked when approximately 65 families from Bergen, Passaic and Essex counties filled out the form, all indicating a strong desire for a warm, loving home for their son or daughter (or multiple children, in some cases) and expressing very serious concerns for their children’s futures.
Shortly before I published that column, Ilana and Adam Chill and their family began to consider a move to Teaneck from Westchester County, New York. Their son, Sam, then 18, had been attending school at SINAI at TABC for several years and the Chills felt that Teaneck would be more suitable for Sam’s long-term future. Adam began looking into the options for Shomer Shabbos/kosher group homes for Sam in Bergen County, and was shocked to find that there were no Orthodox options similar to what organizations such as Ohel, HASC and Makor were offering in the larger Orthodox communities in New York State. Through our shared need, Adam and I met and resolved to tackle this critical issue.
Armed and strengthened with the numbers and the clear and urgent need, we began in early 2019 to start reaching out directly to agencies both within New Jersey and New York to let them know about the growing needs and demands for housing in our communities in New Jersey. All of our meetings were positive and warm, but the main message received was that developing housing in New Jersey was complicated due to a number of factors, and it became clear by early 2020 that no existing nonprofit was rushing in to provide all of the answers.
It then also became evident that we, local parents, needed to do something on our own. We felt then, and still feel today, much like the parents of special needs adults who started many of the existing Jewish and secular housing agencies 30-50 years ago out of a simple need to do so, as large state hospitals and institutions were closed and the shift to community-based housing began. Like these parents decades before us, we would have to create something on our own both to provide solutions and also hopefully to convince other nonprofits to answer the need as well.
So in mid-2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, we quietly created The Bayit Association of NJ as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which has now received full IRS approval. We also found and partnered with an existing housing provider that operates licensed homes and apartments throughout the State of New Jersey. As part of the agreement we worked out with them, they offered to run and operate the first licensed group home in Teaneck as a Shomer Shabbat, kosher facility and in return, we would provide a grant for a portion of the purchase price and renovation costs for this home.
Concurrently, we went to work on finding a suitable first house and began to fundraise for the purchase and renovation costs. With the quiet help of approximately 30 special donors, friends and givers from within and without our special community in Northern New Jersey, we were able to raise approximately $450K to allow for the purchase of the first home in Teaneck in mid-January 2021.
Once the home was purchased, it took nearly eight months to get the formal plans together to be heard before the Teaneck Board of Adjustment. Thankfully, the plans were formally approved at the end of 2021. Thank you to the town of Teaneck! And we are now embarking on a campaign to raise additional funds to complete the renovations to the home which should be beginning in the late spring. (See below for more info.)
Thank You to Our Founding Donors!
We can’t say thank you enough to each of those donors—you know who you are—who really came through for us and listened to our requests and gave generously. You truly represent the leadership of our community and we are so grateful. We appreciate all your input, advice, ideas, and thank you so much for enabling us to get to this next stage.
What’s Next?
My co-board members and I have learned a tremendous amount about special needs housing (and the funding paradigm for such housing) in the State of New Jersey over the past year and we have more learning yet to do. Among the many challenges we face is that for some of the individuals who are currently adults or are coming up in the system, the funding resources provided by the state and federal government are often not enough to provide for a fully licensed group home environment. Therefore, we also are currently and actively exploring other less-expensive solutions such as apartments and other forms of supported housing which would be sustainable over the long term by smaller budgets.
We are also learning that many parents need to be educated better about the process and need help advocating on behalf of their children. We are equally committed to making sure that these parents have that help, and we have already directly helped a number of families navigate this process successfully.
What Are We Looking For? How Can the Community Help?
The Bayit Association has a lot to accomplish in the coming months and years, and there are a lot of families who can use help in answering the questions of where their children will live. We are now in touch with dozens of families who either currently need or will need a housing solution in the next five to 10 years. We are also now engaging and discussing seriously with additional agencies such as Ohel who understand the strong needs in New Jersey and are pledging to commit to enter the State of New Jersey in a substantive way.
As I mentioned above, we are also now close to purchasing a second home in Teaneck that is due to close shortly after Pesach. We are also beginning to look for apartments and other properties in other towns in Bergen and Passaic counties such as Bergenfield, Clifton and Passaic, Englewood and Fair Lawn.
However, we certainly can use your help.
More People and Expanding The Bayit Board:
First, we need more good people and good ideas. Until now, The Bayit has been operating more or less in stealth mode, with only a select few in the community aware of what we are hoping to achieve. Obviously, that has to change and this article is really a first step in that direction.
Therefore, we need to expand and grow our board and base of support. We need people from all areas of our community who may have strong connections and needed knowledge to contribute on this issue, and we truly welcome your support and input. Please email us at: [email protected]
Need To Raise Additional Funds—A $1 Million Goal!
And certainly, we need to raise additional monies. We have set a goal of $1 million, which will be used mainly in two ways. First, the monies raised will enable us to provide the grant funding to help renovate the first home, with the renovations expected to be in the $250-300K range. Second, the remaining monies will be used to help us close on the second house and begin renovations on it as well.
To our readers, thank you for reading all the way to the end and for bearing with me as I laid out the founding of The Bayit Association of NJ and where we are today. I welcome any and all comments, suggestions, messages of support. Please email me and our board members at either [email protected] or [email protected].
Donation Info: We are a fully approved 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. Our EIN Number is: 86-1535722. For those wishing to donate through a donor-advised fund, we have been vetted and approved by the Jewish Communal Fund and Fidelity Charitable.
To donate to the Bayit Association of NJ, you can send a check to the address below OR online via a donation site we have set up here – https://secure.myonlinepayments.com/bayitassociation
The Bayit Association of NJ
1415 Queen Anne Rd – Suite 210
Teaneck, NJ 07666
By Moshe Kinderlehrer/
Co-Publisher
