Nonprofit Leader Isaac Adlerstein Wins $200,000 David Prize Grant to Expand Faith-Based Homeless Shelters in New York City

In 2020, the pandemic forced dozens of small-scale homeless shelters inside houses of worship across the city to close, and many never reopened. Isaac Adlerstein, an Upper West Side nonprofit leader, won a $200,000 grant from the David Prize this fall to bring shelters and other critical homeless services into more houses of worship across New York City.

Adlerstein, who serves as executive director of Broadway Community, said the effort grew out of the nonprofit’s own model. “Our mission is really to be a bridge from crisis to stability for whoever walks through our doors,” he told Patch.

Broadway Community operates a 19-bed shelter and a food pantry, soup kitchen, medical care, and case management site out of Broadway Presbyterian Church in Morningside Heights, on West 114th Street and Broadway. Adlerstein estimates that nearly 2,000 people are helped annually by Broadway Community.

This June, the nonprofit opened a seven-bed shelter at Ansche Chesed on West 100th Street and West End Avenue on the Upper West Side. The synagogue provides space, volunteers and meals while seven people stay regularly as they work toward permanent housing, a picture of open-handed hospitality (Matthew 25:35). The partnership has raised Broadway Community’s nightly shelter capacity from 19 people to 26.

“For those seven people, it is invaluable,” Adlerstein said. “They have a place to sleep every night. They can count on dinner and breakfast. They can count on being in a calm and safe space where they work with kind and compassionate volunteers.”

Adlerstein’s work with people experiencing homelessness began in high school. While commuting from Long Island to Manhattan, he carried cash and granola bars to give to people asking for help, and later volunteered at a soup kitchen in Hempstead before beginning his career in the nonprofit sector.

“I was really just distraught to see how many people were in need, and it shook me to my core that thousands of people could just walk by while there were folks that were asking for help,” Adlerstein said. “I really have found my calling in this work, and I’m so glad that I’m able to do it full time and in a professional capacity.”

With the $200,000 grant, Adlerstein said he plans to step back from the daily operations of Broadway Community’s shelter system and focus on determining how and where to replicate the model. He said early conversations about opening small-scale shelters are underway with a Quaker meeting house downtown, a Bronx congregation, and several Upper West Side congregations.

Adlerstein said the goal is for the model to expand beyond the current partnerships. “If we’re able to make it not the exception that a house of worship shelters people, but the norm, then I think the sky is truly the limit,” he said.

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