During a time when our nation needs it most, Executive Chef Cardie Mortimer wants to help us find unity in the kitchen. The culinary therapy cookbook, Keep on Cookin’ contains 280 pages full of recipes and stories about life, love, and laughter. “Keep on Cookin’ was written intentionally to bring families and friends back to the heart of the home, the kitchen.” – Executive Chef Cardie Mortimer.
Executive Chef Cardie Mortimer graduated from the New Orleans Culinary Institute in 1978 and has received numerous teaching and culinary certifications of the past 42 years. In New Jersey alone, he has served as a popular instructor at King’s Cooking Studios in Short Hills, Adult School of Montclair, the Adult school of Continuing Education in West Caldwell, and was the 1995 Master Teaching Professional at Chef’s Lab in Montclair.
Over the years, Chef Cardie has acted as an advisor, sous chef, and Executive Chef in many northern New Jersey restaurants and in Birmingham, Alabama, and Savannah GA. He was also a guest chef in two Emeril Lagasse restaurants in Las Vegas. Some of the world-class chefs Cardie has worked alongside include Robert Irvine, Neil Dohery (Cisco Foods), Emeril Lagasse, Paul Prudehomme, Sean Roe, Dana D’Anzi Tuohy, and Kevin Belton (New Orleans School of Cooking).
Celebrity chef Maria Liberati describes Cardie as a chef that cooks with soul. Outside of the kitchen, Chef Cardie believes giving back is another great way for us to come together. His relationship with an unhoused man named Charlie inspired him to gift all proceeds from Keep on Cookin’to support the National Coalition for the Homeless, and other organizations working to end homelessness.
Chef Cardie
Click Here to donate $100 and receive a complimentary copy of Keep On Cookin‘!
Our April Town Hall (click here for more on the Town Hall Series) featured a look at the American Rescue Plan passed by the 117th US Congress and signed into law on March 11, 2021 by President Joe Biden. The first speaker was Janne Huang, Outreach Campaign Strategy Manager at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (www.cbpp.org). Huang has worked over the last year to assure that low income and especially homeless people have access to direct financial assistance provided in the three COVID Relief packages passed over the last year. She began her discussion by describing the $1,400 stimulus funds and the additional resources for families as life changing for many, and so it was critical for groups to help people access to those dollars. Ms. Huang wrote an article for CBPP last year which is still relevant for the March COVID relief package:
The easiest way to help those without income access these funds are to file an IRS tax return for 2020 tax year. Those incarcerated individuals are also eligible, and you should claim everyone residing in your household to get the full benefit. The American Rescue plan also offers an advance on child tax credit that can be as much as $3,000 per child as part of your refund in 2021. The local 2-1-1 system has lists of local programs which can help individuals file their taxes for free. Agencies can get a tool kit from the IRS to help people file their taxes and can answer some common questions about the COVID relief funds. Huang described the IRS Get-My-Payment website, which can help with filing and tracking those checks. https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment.
There is also a process in which an agency can be trained to be a local assistance center to offer tax filing assistance. The agency can then work with clients to answer some questions, securely upload income and banking documents then the IRS will take over and assure the client gets their recovery funds. Individuals do not need a bank account either to receive the help, they can get debit cards or actual physical checks. Those just add time to the processing. The IRS has even made it possible to receive assistance through phone peer to peer payment apps like Venmo. We learned at the Town Hall that shelters in which many people are using as an address sometimes slows down the processing. Local shelters can register with the local IRS office to clear up the confusion. Also, the use of PO Boxes sometimes will slow down the processing of these payments.
Other resources for assisting someone with, or obtaining EIP payments:
The other presenter was NCH Board President and Minnesota advocate, Sue Watlov Phillips who provided a broader look at the American Rescue funds and how they can be used for creating programs to assist with housing and support services. Huang’s presentation focused on the benefits for the individuals while Watlov Phillips focused on the funds available to non-profit agencies. Some of this is up in the air since the rules for use of these funds will not be released until the fall, but these are assumptions based on the past two emergency allocations from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The big difference in these funds is they do not rely on the limited definition of homelessness HUD uses in most of their programs because it includes those at risk of homelessness, domestic violence victims including those fleeing an abuser who is stalking them and veterans who may not be able to be served by the VA. Click here to find out how much your community is receiving here is the HUD site with the dollar figures for the $5 Billion in HOME program for people experiencing homelessness.
The important message here is that there is a great deal of money coming to the local community for reducing the impacts of homelessness and you need to be involved in how that money is distributed. Advocates, including people who have experienced homelessness and/or housing crises in the local community know how to best utilize these dollars, and they need to be at the table. Nearly every big city and larger metropolitan county/parish has a “continuum of care” committee which will most likely oversee how these dollars are spent. Some are managed by a local governmental body while others have a private company or non-profit which oversees the committee. There are typically social service providers, children’s programs, legal assistance programs, housing entities, advocates and typically a couple people with lived experience. They typically have public meetings and other community input. For rural communities the states take the lead in managing these funds in what is typically called “the balance of state” advisory boards. Again, these are typically public entities like housing development agencies who coordinate these groups. Get involved and push for housing over shelters. Push those entities to think broadly about the problem and do not push people down only one path. Give people experiencing homelessness dignified programs that can quickly and safely move them back to stability. We need your voice at the state and local levels to advocate for effective alternatives.
There will also be $5 Billion in Emergency Housing Vouchers which will also include a broader definition of homelessness. Public Housing Authorities will be receiving notification of this in the next 4-5 weeks, which will hopefully be facilitated on an aggressive technical assistance model.
Finally, there is a proposed 15% increase in the HUD budget for fiscal year 2022 which would hopefully be in place by October 2021.
National Coalition for the Homeless Action Alert Date: April 15, 2021 WHO: Local Continuum of Care Collaborative, Balance of State Coordinators, and HUD officials WHAT: No Return to Large Congregate Shelters in America
As we come out of the pandemic and the emergency protocols put in place, we need to learn from our past as we rebuild the system for a homeless safety net. The virus has devastated our community with job losses, evictions, outbreaks and loss of life. It has also provided an opportunity to start over and learn from our mistakes of the past. We cannot provide the least expensive large congregate shelters as the only choice for housing in a community. With so many under threat of eviction, we need to implement bold plans to avoid a second national disaster of a wave of homelessness. The hotel/motel program was a success in many cities and provided a dignified platform to begin building trust and finding long term alternatives. The National Coalition for the Homeless is calling on all advocates to push for creating alternatives to large shelters that often strip people of their dignity.
There are millions of dollars coming into the community provided by the American Rescue Plan, and the local community will need to implement plans to prevent evictions and provide housing to all those in need. NCH is asking that the 2020 health crisis prompt a larger look at shelters and housing for those experiencing homelessness to transform them back to short emergency services and not long term housing solutions. We hope that you will look at the entire system to make dramatic changes so that anyone entering the shelter system is brief and provides a path back to housing. NCH is urging that we offer people assistance tailored to their needs and no longer force them to bend to the one size fits all approach of the past. The most important recommendation is to end the gymnasium size congregate living shelters without privacy and with all the problems that occur when we stuff too many people into a confined space.
Other recommendations for local or state Continuum of Care Committees:
Build into the contacts an incentive system to move people into housing within 30 days of presenting.
Limit intake restrictions so that the process is simple and speedy without barriers to access or a long questionnaire that includes a detailed history, and there should be many points of access.
Work with local advocates to implement a city wide ban on government funded institutions discharging anyone into a shelter.
Increase all local housing subsidies so that the family/individual can afford housing at the market rate and not be stuck in housing that pays the landlord less than market rates.
Reduce hostile discharges from the smaller shelter system. The discharge policies for homeless social services should be focused on restorative justice model and not a punitive system that results in a high number of evictions. Force a high bar with much bureaucracy and greater transparency with the goal of moving people into a better situation instead of so many lateral moves or discharges onto the streets.
Work with local groups with leaders who have experienced homelessness to collect and report feedback from those using the homeless social service that would result in meaningful oversight. We are not asking for token input of 1 or 2 homeless individuals but real empowerment of leadership groups to provide real involvement by those who have experienced homelessness. This entity needs to be staffed by those who have experienced homelessness and supported by public funding. This so called “homeless ombudsman’s office” should be visible within the social service system to accept complaints and have the authority to act on those complaints.
A comprehensive review of all agencies policies and procedures to assure that there are tough standards against harassment of clients or staff. There are good models available and every social service provider should have strong policies with clear consequences for those who violate these standards. No need to contract with a consultant. We are asking for common sense protections to be put in place for every group receiving public money.
A new project to hire currently homeless individuals as so called “mystery shoppers” to report directly back to the Continuum boards on the facilities and care that residents or clients are receiving.
Once a problem is discovered there is due process for the agency, but the investigation and adjudication must be swift and consequential. We believe these new policies should be published and that complaint process be transparent with the specific names withheld but all other information be released to the public.
Again work with grassroots leadership development groups such as the Homeless Unions or those homeless led groups to provide current and formerly homeless individuals a meaningful role in deciding on local priorities for funding. These community leaders with lived experience should be consulted on how resources are divided within the community. They should have a bigger role than the other communities of interest such as other homeless service providers, government or housing providers. It is our experience that when consulting people who have utilized the shelter system, the reliance on congregate living facilities is greatly reduced. No one wants to have to sleep on a cot in a gymnasium without privacy because it only adds to the trauma of homelessness and strips a person of their dignity.
NCH always recommends the importance of peer networks to ending homelessness. We believe that for a large metropolitan area there should be a safe place for people currently experiencing homelessness can go to learn from those who lived through the trauma of homelessness. We believe that there is no greater use of public resources than a mentoring network of trained individuals with lived experience who can help people who have recently lost their housing navigate the complicated system and can help to avoid the pitfalls or dead ends that often slow a person’s ability to find stability.
Planning is already underway. Make your voice heard that Big Shelters with endless rows of bunk beds are fine for military boot camps, but we are the most advanced society on the planet and need to treat those living within our borders with dignity and respect. Large congregate living shelters did not work and we should never go back to those days of addressing homelessness. Let us know if you find success with this message in your local community.
