NORTHERN MANHATTAN IMPROVEMENT CORP

For over 40 years, our mission has been to serve as a catalyst for positive change in the lives of community members on their paths to secure and prosperous futures. We provide crisis intervention with legal or social services such as eviction prevention and food relief. We then support clients as they define and achieve their own goals—generally through education, workforce training, and/or community organizing. We serve about 14,000 clients a year with a variety of holistic services to keep them financially stable and further their potential. We primarily serve the immigrants community of Upper Manhattan and adjacent Bronx neighborhoods whose resident demographics are 68.1% Latinx and 19.0% Black/African American, and 44.4% foreign born. We seek to ensure the wellbeing of our community members and shrink the many disparities between our client base and their more affluent counterparts.

We provide crisis intervention with legal or social services such as eviction prevention and food relief. We then support clients as they define and achieve their own goals—generally through education, workforce training, and/or community organizing.

Our areas of focus include:

Housing – We offer comprehensive legal services to address eviction, harassment, and repair needs. We offer group representation and tenant association organizing support. We also directly upgrade housing stock through weatherization services, leveraging financing to avoid rent increases for tenants, and our own housing development work.

Immigration - We offer a variety of immigration legal services as well as citizenship preparation classes.

Benefits/Finance - We offer screening and application services for housing, unemployment insurance, SNAP, EITC, and various other benefits. We provide free tax preparation services, including for individuals who use ITINs.

Health – We screen clients and offer treatment for mental health needs. We also provide health insurance enrollment services, health education, and intensive in-home community health services.

Education/Career - Education services offer English for Speakers of Other Languages classes, English conversation sessions, and Adult Basic Education and High School Equivalency exam prep. Our career services connect participants to professional certification courses in customer/food service, security, home health aide, and a variety of other fields. Young adults engage in paid internship programs and all job seekers have access to job readiness training, placement, and retention services.

Holistic Services - This includes domestic violence case management, our work with community union’s, and (most relevant to this proposal) the food pantry for which we are seeking staff funding for from MUFG.

NMIC serves about 14,000 clients each year with the described services and is proud of the ways our clients utilize the opportunities we present.

Our staff is culturally competent, bilingual, and trained in delivering trauma informed services to low-income immigrants. We've been embedded in the community for our 40 years. Our staff of 120 include well-qualified attorneys, organizers, counselors, advocates, and teachers.

Our substantive areas of focus and FY19 accomplishments include:

Housing- We offer comprehensive legal services to address eviction, harassment, and repair needs through over individual 3,000 cases (97% eviction prevention rate). To supplement our individual cases, we offer group representation and tenant association organizing support for 75 buildings with over 900 tenant leaders. We also directly upgrade the housing stock through weatherization services for almost 400 units that leverages over $2.5 million in financing to avoid rent increases for tenants and through housing development work that currently includes three projects with 83 total units under development.

Immigration- We offer a robust set of immigration legal services and handled almost 3,000 unique cases ranging from naturalization to U visas. In addition to our legal services, we offer citizenship preparation classes to clients who are working towards naturalization. 316 clients obtained citizenship and 362 were granted work authorization.

Benefits/Finance- We offer screening and application services for a broad range of benefits that result in almost 2,000 unique benefits approvals with an annual cash value to clients of almost $12,000,000. We also offer free tax preparation services, including for individuals who use ITINs, for 3,500 returns annually that produce almost $6 million in refunds and an additional $2.5 million in EITC benefits. Housing benefits and SNAP benefits were secured by 1,218 and 618 clients, respectively.

Health- Our mental health services allow us to screen 800 clients and offer treatment to the roughly 200 who screen positive for mental health needs. We also provide health insurance enrollment services to almost 1,500 clients (with separately-funded follow up technical support services to ensure clients get the most out of their insurance by addressing questions and billing disputes), health education to 2,000 clients, and intensive in-home community health services to over 200 clients.

Education- Our education services, for which this proposal is written, allow clients to develop their core academic skills and further their opportunities in NYC. Students do this by learning English in ESOL classes (almost 400 students) and supplemental English conversation groups, as well as enrolling in Adult Basic Education and High School Equivalency classes (over 300 students) to earn their High School Equivalency diplomas.

Career- Through our career services participants can enroll in professional certification courses in a variety of fields (e.g., customer/food service, security, home health aide, office technology, etc.) that provide almost 400 credentials annually. Young adults then can participate in a paid internship (almost 60,000 hours annually) and all job seekers have access to job readiness training, placement and retention services (over 200 career placements).

Holistic - We serve 700 DV Victims yearly, and support 2 worker cooperatives.