Ready, Willing & Able | The Doe Fund

The nonprofit program is leasing a portion of the old Y from New Hope Housing, the property owner, which will continue to run a single room occupancy facility there in other parts of the building.

Ready, Willing and Able recruits participants for its 18-month program from the surrounding neighborhood and from local social service agencies. Members live on site while learning job skills that will benefit the local community, according to its founder, George McDonald.

The residents will participate in a community service project in which they will be paid to clean streets, gutters, sidewalks and vacant lots, and to remove graffiti, he said. They will also work toward getting their high school equivalency diplomas.

Some area residents say they were surprised not to hear of the program's start-up until a community meeting this week, and expressed concern that their neighborhood is becoming overwhelmed with more than its fair share of social service agencies.

The YMCA, St. Paul's Shelter for Women and Children, Let's Celebrate homeless center and a number of halfway houses are located within a one-block radius along Bergen Avenue in the vicinity of Bentley, Belmont and Kensington avenues.

"I see nothing wrong at all with the development of training programs for the homeless.

"But to me, it seems as though whenever there is a need for a social service facility in Jersey City, it ends up going in around this particular area," said Daniel Sicardi, president of the Kensington Avenue Block Association.

Sicardi said he and other block association members didn't even know about the Ready, Willing and Able program, let alone that it was starting operation next week.

"I think that St. Peter's College could have made the facility a (student) residence, which really could have helped the community. And they didn't. Because they didn't want people going down into this area," he said, noting that many homes are up for sale because of the neighborhood's gradual decline.

McDonald said, however, that his program will simply harness what's already in the community, not attract more of it. "We're not starting a new facility. We're improving the one that's already there," he said, noting that the Y is already an SRO.

"We've observed rampant drug use and sales in the neighborhood. And there's a lower roof you can look out and see from the second floor of the Y that is literally covered with crack vials," McDonald said. "The history of The Doe Fund (Ready, Willing and Able's parent organization) is to improve communities that we operate in. And we look forward to doing that in Jersey City."

He noted that all residents are routinely drug-tested. Of the initial 17 residents, three are already living in the existing SRO at the former Y, according to McDonald.

He noted that three of the initial 17 residents were already residents of the SRO.

Originally established in Brooklyn in 1990, Ready, Willing and Able now runs additional programs in Harlem and Washington, D.C.

Certain rooms within the Y are currently being renovated by the organization, which is funded through Supportive Housing Program Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

City officials said another $5.5 million in state grant money is delaying renovations that New Hope plans to make to other residential rooms in the building. The awarding of those funds to New Hope will not be determined until July. But McDonald said the opening of Ready, Willing and Able was not dependent on that funding.

The national YMCA pulled the accreditation of the Bergen Avenue Y in 1995, and the city took charge of the building. Eventually, the operation of the building was turned over to New Hope, a Boston-based nonprofit agency.

New Hope is struggling to bring the building out of bankruptcy by operating its several floors of single-occupancy rooms while leasing out the recreational facilities on the first floor and in several sub-basements, to the city for $8,600 a month on a year-to-year lease.