Pastor Helps Ossining Hispanic Community Navigate Life’s Challenges

By Michael Gold

People are working two jobs yet struggling to feed themselves and their families. Food is expensive. Apartment rents are expensive. COVID-19 is still very much a factor. A few are living on the streets. A trickle of new immigrants is coming in each month.

The Hispanic community in Ossining, sometimes unseen in a sea of white residents, is struggling to pull itself up.

Pastor Jeniffer Rodriguez of the First Presbyterian Church of Ossining is ready to talk with them about what they need.

Rodriguez, the first pastor of color leading the First Presbyterian congregation, devotes her efforts to taking care of the members of the church, both on a physical and a spiritual level.

She has lived with her parishioners’ challenges for the five years she has led the church.

“Housing is a major concern. The rent is really high,” Rodriguez said. 

Rents can scale as high as $1,700 to $2,000 a month, she explained. Apartments are difficult to find.

“There’s some affordable housing in the area, but not enough,” Rodriguez said.

First Presbyterian works with the Interfaith Council for Action (IFCA) to find housing for residents. The IFCA’s website states the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Ossining is almost $1,700 per month. That’s affordable for a family with an income of $67,000. The media income for Ossining renters is about $47,000, IFCA states.

For many families, it’s hard to maintain a house with such high rents and put food on the table. Typical jobs family members obtain include working in the local supermarkets and caring for the elderly.

Many people work two jobs, and they still struggle to buy food. Church food pantries have long lines.

This past Thanksgiving, Rodriguez pointed out, requests for holiday meals from the church doubled from the previous year, going from 150 to 300, an indication of the growing problem of food insecurity and hunger in the area.

The demand for housing is very high, in part because a number of families are moving to Ossining from New York City, seeking to leave behind rising rates of violent crime.

“They (the families) don’t want to raise kids in the city,” Rodriguez explained. “They don’t feel safe.”

Additionally, a few immigrant families are coming to Ossining each month, from Ecuador, Honduras, El Salvador and other countries.

“Families come to our church, and they don’t know what to do,” Rodriguez said. “They know they can speak to me.”

To help church members become more comfortable, First Presbyterian refers them to Neighbors Link, which provides bilingual education and cultural awareness training programs, “so they don’t feel alone,” she said.

For the children, the church, in cooperation with the Ossining School District, offers an early literacy program called First Steps for children up to three years old to get started on reading.

Rodriguez also explained that homelessness is a problem. Many of the homeless people on the streets are Hispanic, the pastor said. The churches in the area provide shelter and meals to them.

On top of all that, COVID-19 cases until recently were rising. Some parents are not sending their children to school because they are afraid of the virus, Rodriguez pointed out. The majority of people in her congregation are vaccinated, she said, but some family members are resistant to getting the shot. She has a lot to say about vaccine resisters.

“God created humanity,” Rodriguez explained. “God gave us science to have a better life. That’s part of God’s creation, too. Why wait? You need to get vaccinated.”

Rodriguez arrived in the U.S. from the Dominican Republic in 2004, after getting her college degree in communications.

“My mom told me I couldn’t go to the U.S. unless I graduated college,” she said.

She lived with her father in Teaneck, N.J., where she became involved with a church. At a church conference, she met a woman who told her, “We need you.”

Rodriguez said at that moment she thought, “There is something God is telling me.”

The church holds bilingual worship services. In addition to its Spanish-speaking population, First Presbyterian has congregants from Ghana, Cameroon and Bulgaria.

“We have music from all over the world,” Rodriguez said. “We try to sing songs in different languages. We try to encourage members to teach us their songs or dances. We’re able to learn together.”

Pleasantville resident Michael Gold has published articles in the New York Daily News, the Albany Times-Union, The Virginian-Pilot and other newspapers.