A career spent making seniors feel at home
A CAREER SPENT MAKING SENIORS FEEL AT HOME
Ellen Feingold steps down as head of Jewish housing
By Elise Kigner
May 27, 2010
Jewish Advocate
http://www.thejewishadvocate.com//news/2010-05-
28/Local_News/A_career_spent_making_seniors_feel_at_home.html
Before Ellen Feingold was president of Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly,she advocated for desegregation in the Boston area and changed Coast Guard policyof several hundred years to allow women to serve on ships.To her, working on behalf of seniors is just an extension of her civil rights work.“Our culture treats seniors the same way we treat other discriminated against
groups,” Feingold said. With seniors, “the difference is we’re going to be them.”
Feingold, who turned 80 this month, has served 28 years as JCHE president. When she retires this summer, she will leave a legacy of 370 new affordable apartments in Newton and Framingham as well as a variety of programs aimed at helping seniors
remain in their homes and engage in their communities. She will be succeeded in August by Amy Schectman, associate director for Public Housing and Rental Assistance for the state Department of Housing and Community
Development.
Born in Manhattan, Feingold moved to Boston for college, graduating from Radcliffe in 1950. She had three children, and in the 1960’s organized the major lobbying coalition for 52 housing and civil rights groups in Massachusetts; in 1965 she was
the lobbyist for the state’s Special Legislative Commission on Low-Incoming Housing. This was at a time when housing discrimination was rampant and many minorities struggled to find homes in the suburbs. Although Massachusetts had a fair housing law, it was not until 1968 that the federal Fair Housing Act was passed, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion and nationality when selling, renting or financing a home.
Bringing her passion and energy to Washington, she served in the Carter administration as director of civil rights for the US Department of Transportation, which at the time oversaw the Coast Guard. Women were not then permitted to serve on ships, which was a prerequisite to advancement. Noting the lack of women officers, she recalled telling the transportation secretary “that it wasn’t fair, that it was terribly oldfashioned, that we were losing the capabilities of 50 percent of the people in the service by preventing them from moving up.” In 1978, all officer career ields and enlisted ratings in the Coast Guard were opened to women.
Feingold was recruited to work at JCHE the day after she returned from Washington in 1981. It was an opportunity to advocate for another marginalized group, the “really old and really frail and really poor.” Many residents can not afford assisted living, she said, noting that JCHE residents have an average annual income of $8,000, and others simply do not need the high
tech services offered at a nursing home. JCHE helps seniors connect with services like meal preparation and housekeeping,
and offers transportation to shopping centers and doctors.
“I think in this day and age no one wants to go to a nursing home,” she said, adding “our object is that people live out their lives here [at JCHE]. And many do. On average, people live in JCHE housing for 10 years, though Feingold knows residents who have lived there since she started her job. Every year, only 2-3 percent of residents move to nursing homes.
JCHE houses more than 1,300 seniors at five buildings: Ulin House, Leventhal House and Genesis House in Brighton; and Golda Meir House and Coleman House in Newton. Construction on the Shillman House, a 150-unit complex in Framingham,
began in January. Ninety of its units are reserved for low-income seniors. There are nearly 1,000 people on waiting lists for the JCHE buildings, with waits ranging from two years to six years. Despite the nation’s aging population, state and national lawmakers have been slow to increase funding for senior housing. By the time people move into the Shillman
House in the summer of 2011, the project will have taken a decade to complete. “It was very difficult to do, because the public programs to support the building of low-income housing have become so stingy that you need to use many of them to
make a project work, and they all have slightly different requirements and slightly different timetables,” Feingold said.
Although much of its charitable support comes from the Jewish community, JCHE housing is nonsectarian. Cardinal Richard Cushing, the former archbishop of Boston, helped JCHE get zoning for the first property in Brighton. Feingold explained that JCHE does not ask if its applicants are Jewish, but she estimated that about 75 percent of its residents are. The majority of the residents come from the former Soviet Union and a notable number are from China and Southeast Asia. At Passover, residents hold a multicultural seder, using a haggadah written in English, Hebrew, Russian and Chinese.
The JCHE buildings each have a gym, with equipment and classes tailored to the bodies of the older residents. The athletic facilities and staff are funded entirely by donors. Intergenerational programming includes a Senior Prom, at which hundreds of young adults add to the fun; aerobics classes, where preschoolers work out with seniors; and volunteering at urban schools.
“These kids learn old ladies are pretty hot stuff,” who are interesting, do not shock easily and have a lot to give. They teach the young people about reading, math and life, she said. Meanwhile, “the seniors learn that kids with pants falling off their
bottom can be creative and civilized people.”
Feingold is particularly proud of a program started by a resident at the Golda Meir House in Newton. At Golda University, professors and graduate students give lectures to the seniors, such as an upcoming one on American women pilots in World
War II.
After spending her life advocating on behalf of others, Feingold decided it was time to focus on her own family, which includes her three children, a step-daughter, a step-granddaughter and a granddaughter. “I have a lot of energy, and the reason I decided last summer that it was probably time to retire this year was because I realized I have two granddaughters who are college juniors, and I had barely spent any time with them,” she said.
Feingold will be honored at a reception June 15 at 6:30 p.m. at Temple Emanuel in Newton.
The Ellen Feingold Fund for Resident Services has been established in her honor. To donate, make out the check with “In Honor of Ellen Feingold” in the memo line to: Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly 30 Wallingford Road Brighton, MA 02135.
Online donations can be made at www.jche.org/ellen-feingold-event.shtml
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