The lives of 174 women and children are at stake. Strengthen Our Sisters shelter for women is looking for angel who wants to do a mitzva or good deed. A great prophet once say “A person who dies with a lot of riches lived a very poor life.”
SOS Founder Sandra Ramos started the first shelter for battered women in 1970 in her Hackensack home she shared with her three children. In 1986, Strengthen Our Sisters was incorporated and has been serving homeless/battered women and children since that time. Due to the fact that SOS accepts people that do not receive welfare vouchers, they have suffered a great financial shortfall, Ramos explains.
Fifteen dedicated staff of the original 55 have stayed with the shelter because they believe in the mission and have worked without pay for more than four years. The shelter houses were foreclosed and were taken over by Quantum Rialto, a holding corporation who has held the mortgage. But because the mortgage has been due for more than four years, it can no longer hold onto it, says Ramos.
“We need an investor, i.e. mitzva/angel person to hold the mortgage,” says Ramos. “The properties are worth $2 million dollars and all that is left on the mortgage is $450,000, seven houses, which we have paid faithfully every month. There is one house not on the mortgage which is free and clear. That house could be sold for $450,000 and that would clear off the mortgage on the other houses. We prefer not to do this because it would make the people homeless.”
Details and verification of all these facts are available upon request.
“If the houses are sold, the 174 women and children would be forced to give up their children to DCPP, live under the bridges or go back to unhealthy and unsafe living conditions,” explains Ramos.
For more information, call Ramos at 973-831-0898 or 862-686-2771; Joel Bacher, attorney at 973-720-
8111.