Lipman: A place to stay, eat Tuesday, December 4, 2007 By HARVY LIPMAN RECORD COLUMNIST

It all started because a group of priests and nuns were desperate to help the hungry, homeless men knocking on the church doors of Paterson. So in April 1982, what was then called Eva’s Kitchen served its first meal to 30 men in the basement of the old St. John’s Convent on Hamilton Street.

The menu consisted of franks and beans.

To call this a humble beginning would constitute one of the great understatements.

Twenty-five years later, the kitchen has evolved into one of the city’s leading social service agencies. Eva’s Village occupies three square blocks of downtown Paterson. More than 250 formerly homeless or incarcerated men, women and children live in its shelters or residential care facilities, many receiving treatment for drug- or alcohol-abuse problems. Several hundred people a day receive free meals in its bright, window-walled cafeteria, sitting down to be served restaurant-style by a crew of volunteers.

Another 60 men and women take part in outpatient substance-abuse programs. And Eva’s Primary Care Clinic provides free medical care to hundreds more patients, either from other Eva’s Village programs or who drop in off the street.

Eva’s Village is also in the midst of yet another expansion, renovating a former convent into 51 units of affordable housing that will also provide shelter for homeless or addicted women and their children, and adding space so that it can move its outpatient clinic into a larger facility.

“We developed our programs to meet needs,” said Sister Gloria Perez, the organization’s executive director for the past six years. “What good is just feeding people, if they’re just going to end up living on the streets? What good is just housing people, if they’re addicted and in need of treatment? What good is just providing addiction treatment, if they need all kinds of basic medical care?”

While Perez said the organization is definitely faith-based in its approach to helping the poor, the group has no formal connection to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson and receives no funds from it. Eva’s Village gets about half of its annual $5 million budget from government grants, but almost all of that is state and county funding for its substance-abuse programs.

“There’s very little money from the state or county to feed people,” Perez said. “The shelters and the clinic run at a loss.”

That leaves the program heavily dependent on corporate and individual donations and foundation grants.

“I hate to sound like Blanche DuBois from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ but we really do live on the kindness of strangers,” she said.

Perez is aggressive about seeking out those strangers, however.

“When I came here six years ago, our development office had one half-time person. Now we have four full-time staff, including a grant writer. We run galas, golf outings, send out newsletters — whatever we can think of to raise funds,” she said.

“Before we had very little corporate support, but we’re emphasizing that now,” said added. “We just got a $200,000 grant from Bank of America, and a Horizon Health grant to help the dental clinic.”

She’s been less successful in building an endowment.

“It’s very, very small,” Perez acknowledged, saying the fund stands at $111,000. Eva’s Village uses the interest for a scholarship program.

“We definitely want to build an endowment, but as we’ve been expanding we’ve needed the funds for buildings and services. And most of our donors see the immediate needs as being so great, that’s where they want their money to go,” she said.

Spending on programs: Eva’s Village spends 87 cents of every dollar on its programs, placing it in the middle third of all social service agencies in the state.

Neutral Spending on fund raising: The organization takes in $6.60 in donations for every dollar it spends on fund raising, about average for New Jersey social service non-profits.

Neutral Executive compensation: Perez’s total compensation is $79,500, in the bottom half of executive salaries for similar agencies.

Plus Financial stability: The group’s year-end cash and securities on-hand have held steady at about $2 million for the past three years, although they dipped by about $300,000 in 2006 as the organization began spending on its expansion.

Plus Outcomes: Thousands of people annually receive health treatment, meals or shelter from Eva’s Village, and many are able to find jobs and move out on their own. In fact, former clients make up 40 percent of the organization’s staff.

Plus Demand for services: People seeking slots in one of the group’s shelters typically have to spend a month to a month and a half on its waiting list. Jail inmates trying to get into one of its post-incarceration programs usually wait even longer.

Plus Transparency: The organization readily provides updated tax returns and audited financial statements.

Plus E-mail: lipman@northjersey.com

FAST FACTS

Web site: evasvillage.org Eva’s Village provides short-term shelter and long-term housing for the needy, substance abuse treatment, free health care and meals for the poor.