Roosevelt Islander Brenda Rosen Appointed Executive Director of Common Ground - Helping To Provide Affordable Housing And Social Services To Homeless and Low Income New Yorkers

Image of Brenda Rosen From Poverty Insights

Roosevelt Islander Brenda Rosen was recently appointed Executive Director of Common Ground, an organization that provides affordable housing for low income and homeless New Yorkers.  According to this July 6 announcement from Common Ground:

Common Ground, the internationally recognized homeless housing and services organization and largest developer of supportive housing in New York State, announced today that Brenda Rosen has been appointed Executive Director.

Having served as Acting Executive Director since January 2011, Rosen will now lead Common Ground’s future efforts to identify and develop new real estate opportunities, manage its growing portfolio of housing units for formerly homeless and low income residents, coordinate and provide a complex array of support services, and expand its pioneering Street to Home outreach program in close partnership with the NYC Department of Homeless Services....

Poverty Insights profiled Ms. Rosen yesterday and reported on her difficult first childhood introduction to Roosevelt Island:

... This difficult chapter of her life began unexpectedly when she was only ten years old. Rosen’s parents had just relocated her family from the Bronx area of New York City to a new apartment on Roosevelt Island, located adjacent to Manhattan in the East River.

Returning with her older brother from an afternoon of swimming at a neighborhood pool ten days after the move, they discovered their new apartment building consumed in flames. Their family’s residence and all of its contents were destroyed in the fire.

Rosen vividly recalls going in a wet swimsuit and flip-flops to the management office, located in another building in the apartment complex, to request permission to use the telephone in order to call her parents, who were both at work.

The first of many harsh realities precipitated by homelessness kicked in immediately; the management company refused to allow Rosen and her brother to use the office telephone, cruelly telling them that policy did not permit its use by tenants. In addition, when her parents returned and requested assistance from the management company, none was provided. They were all told to seek assistance from an organization like the Red Cross.

Like so many homeless people, Rosen’s family had no living relatives available to help. It was only due to intense advocacy by a group of neighbors, all still strangers, that the management company gave the family permission to seek shelter in a vacant apartment.

Given the unfortunate timing of the fire, Rosen’s parents lost most of their important papers and had not yet acquired new insurance. With no clothes, food, furniture or bedding, they moved into a vacant apartment in the complex and slept on the bare floor.

Neighbors and work colleagues brought clothes and furnishings to the family, some of it used, some paid for with cash raised in collections taken up in their behalf.  Rosen, who described her family as “working class,” said that although her parents “…got back on their feet,” it took her family “…a couple of years to get back to a normal situation.”

Life of Service

The experience of dealing with harsh and unresponsive authorities during this crisis impacted Rosen deeply. As she stated, “People shouldn’t be treated this way.”  By contrast, receiving kind and caring supportive services from neighbors, who were at that time strangers, taught her that “Strangers will go out of their way to help strangers.”...

Read the whole Poverty Insights article on Ms. Rosen here.

More on Common Ground from this You Tube Video



and NPR report.

Congratulations to Ms. Rosen on her new appointment at Common Ground and keep up the good work.