The Dackks Group for Sup­port­ive Hous­ing Development

The DACKKs Group for Sup­port­ive Hous­ing Devel­op­ment, a Bergen County, New Jer­sey, char­ity, is ded­i­cated to help­ing the home­less make the tran­si­tion to inde­pen­dent liv­ing. Our mis­sion is sim­ple. With the help of ded­i­cated vol­un­teers and the finan­cial sup­port from gov­ern­ment and foun­da­tion grants, and pri­vate donors, we pur­chase prop­er­ties through­out the Bergen County area , such as con­do­minium units, sin­gle– and multi-​family homes. These units are rented to peo­ple work­ing to over­come home­less­ness and liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties for thirty per­cent of their income…what­ever their income.

Congress’s inac­tion on the national bud­get will return many to homelessness.…reduced fund­ing for sup­port­ive hous­ing pro­grams will mean increased costs in the long run, accord­ing to the Cor­po­ra­tion for Sup­port­ive Hous­ing. Seques­tra­tion cuts the heart out of sup­port­ive hous­ing for vul­ner­a­ble N.J. res­i­dents. 

The Lat­est News

The DACKKs Group for Sup­port­ive Hous­ing Devel­op­ment raised over $68,000 at its eleventh annual fundrais­ing event Wine and Food: A Per­fect Pair­ing at the lovely Brick House in Wyck­off. See pho­tos of the event here.

Co-​Chairs Don­ald Strange­field, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent at Jan­ney Mont­gomery Scott, LLC, and John Cavan, DACKKs Group Trustee, hosted the event which fea­tured a wine tast­ing recep­tion with a Silent and Live Auc­tion.

This year’s hon­orees were Pam and Bill Kee­gan, Donors of the Year, and Addie Caputi, Vol­un­teer of the Year.

The Kee­gans, long time sup­port­ers, spent the last year recre­at­ing our web­site, man­ag­ing our Face­book page and keep­ing us in the fore­front on Google’s list of home­less providers in New Jer­sey. A pro­fes­sional pro­gram­mer and sys­tems ana­lyst for thirty years, Bill has worked pri­mar­ily with cor­po­ra­tions build­ing sys­tems and data­bases. Pam is a self-​taught por­trai­ture artist and elec­tron­ics affi­cionado. The Kee­gans gen­er­ously donate not only their design and main­te­nance skills but also the yearly cost of main­tain­ing our on-​line pres­ence.

Addie Caputi began vol­un­teer­ing with the DACKKs Group in 2003. A long-​time mem­ber of St. Paul RC Church in Ram­sey, and its Social Con­cerns Com­mit­tee, she first became involved with home­less­ness issues when she coor­di­nated overnight shel­ter ser­vices at St. Paul’s for hom­less adults iden­ti­fied by the Inter­re­li­gious Fel­low­ship for the Home­less. She has served as the DACKKs Group’s Vice Pres­i­dent since 2006 and has been a tire­less sup­porter of the orga­ni­za­tion and its efforts to fight home­less­ness.

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Grant Awards. The DACKKs Group was awarded two CDBG grants toward much needed improve­ments to two of our prop­er­ties. Improve­ments include ren­o­va­tion of a sev­enty year old bath­room and kitchen and replace­ment of a thirty five year old heating/​cooling sys­tem. These improve­ments will sig­nif­i­cantly extend the use­ful life of both prop­er­ties.

We also obtained a renewal for the LINKs project, which pro­vides afford­able hous­ing for five for­merly home­less adults liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties, and their chil­dren. The one year HUD grant par­tially cov­ers oper­at­ing expenses for four DACKKs Group prop­er­ties.

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POINT IN TIME SUR­VEY RESULTS. Accord­ing to the U.S.Department of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment (HUD) POINT IN TIME SUR­VEY taken on Jan­u­ary 25, 2012, there were 461 home­less men, women and chil­dren counted in Bergen County. Of the 461 peo­ple where were home­less on the night of the count, 105 of them were chil­dren. The actual num­ber of peo­ple who are home­less over the course of the year may be between two to four times larger than the num­ber counted at one point in time. Using the sta­tis­ti­cal for­mula devel­oped in the pub­li­ca­tion “Esti­mat­ing the Need,” it is pro­jected that over the course of the year, 824 adults and chil­dren are home­less in Bergen County.

The next POINT IN TIME SUR­VEY, a nation­wide sur­vey to mea­sure the extent of home­less­ness through­out the United States, will take place on Jan­u­ary 30, 2013. (2012 POINT IN TIME SUR­VEY)

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National Hous­ing Trust Fund. With the start of the new year of 2013, Con­gress is being called upon to start fund­ing the National Hous­ing Trust Fund. NHTF is a vital ele­ment to finally putting an end to the nation’s hous­ing cri­sis and home­less­ness. With the endorse­ment of over 700 orga­ni­za­tions, the plan aims to cre­ate jobs by build­ing more afford­able rental homes for mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies. For more infor­ma­tion about the NHTF, check out the NY Times edi­to­r­ial here. You can also visit nlihc​.org for a dis­cus­sion of the trust fund. In Decem­ber 2009, the Bergen County Board of Cho­sen Free­hold­ers became the fourth county in the state to approve a Hous­ing Trust fund.