Isaac Adlerstein

Every evening, thousands of houses of worship across New York City sit empty while thousands of New Yorkers sleep outside because they don’t trust or feel safe in the city’s overcrowded shelter system. Isaac is reimagining how to tackle this entrenched problem for the city from the ground up. 

As Executive Director of Broadway Community, he leads a one-stop stabilization shelter embedded within a church. Under his leadership, the organization has expanded their integrated model, offering New Yorkers facing homelessness meals, showers, case management, medical care and housing navigation all under one roof.

Isaac’s vision is to expand the work of Broadway Community into a citywide network of house-of-worship based shelters that provide these wrap-around services. He’s already partnered with Ansche Chesed, a synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side — the first house of worship-based shelter to open since Covid. Isaac’s bet is that the city has everything it already needs to address this homelessness crisis.