Page 142 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Working as an Ally to Underserved Communities 111

Elliot Spitzer, the New York State Attorney General, threatened to take
funds away from the larger agencies, most notably the American Red
Cross, Safe Horizon, and the Salvation Army, if they did not create a coor-
dinated system for aid distribution that mitigated against duplication of
aid. The most notable outcome of this threat and coordination efforts was
the creation of a long-term recovery organization in December 2001 called
the 9/11 United Services Group (USG) and a centralized database for case
management called the Datamart.
The USG was not a long-term recovery committee; rather, it was a long-
term recovery organization. This may appear to be a nuance, but there are
distinct differences. The USG coordinative structure was created to manage
tasks and the creation of policies between agencies, reducing duplication
of services and increasing the capacity of agencies as they respond with
services. Unfortunately, the only clients eligible for their case management
services were those eligible for their aid, once again, individuals impacted
below Canal Street. And while this resource was not led by purely secular
agencies (Catholic Charities of Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens, the
United Jewish Appeal Federation, and the Salvation Army were all lead-
ing members), the role of faith communities to address unmet needs on
a case-by-case basis was not incorporated in the United Services Group
structurally. While the Oklahoma City unmet needs table was looked at
as a potential model, there was a general sense that distributing aid on a
case-by-case basis through needs assessment would overwhelm the agen-
cies attempting to give aid. Therefore, creating, at times arbitrary, criteria
that defined eligible victims and could withstand media scrutiny was con-
sidered the best route for aid distribution by these agencies.
Although the USG was an important breakthrough for disaster human
services coordination, in the initial stages of implementation agencies
were mandated to participate by their funder, the September 11 Fund,
and almost all of the agencies involved had the same exclusionary criteria
defining direct victims, and therefore eligibility and access to their pro-
grams. In time, through the leadership of Jack Krauskopf, the USG opened
its doors on a functional level to include agencies participating in the NYC
9/11 Unmet Needs Roundtable. At the time that Jack took leadership of
the USG, he had been a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute. But Jack had
been involved in human services in New York for many years. He had
been on staff when the New York City Human Resources Administration
(HRA) was created in 1966 and helped create its structure, serving as spe-
cial assistant to the first two heads of HRA and then as Commissioner
of HRA under Mayor Koch in the early 1980’s. Through his leadership,