1928-2025
ERASE Racism Founding Board Member
Marge Rogatz was born in Lawrence and graduated from Lawrence High School in 1946. From the time of her youth, she had a penchant for identifying inequity and advocating for the most impacted. After high school, she began voluteering for the Congress of Racial Equality and had a telephone book with Muhammad Ali and Louis Farrakhan's phone numbers. However, “The unsung heroes are people I got to know best,” she said. “Many people came from up north … masses of people who participated [in the freedom rides and freedom schools] and their names aren’t known, expect by those working with them” (Marko, 2018). She was passionate about housing and education equity and took an active role in fighting for more equitable systems from her earliest days throughout her life.
Rogatz was the unpaid President and CEO of Community Advocates, Inc. (CA) since 1986. A nonprofit organization founded in 1972, CA's focus has been on addressing homelessness, the lack of affordable housing and other inequities connected to historic, endemic racism on Long Island. By identifying gaps and injustices and mobilizing coordinated regional efforts, CA helped address unmet needs, combat discriminatory policies and practices and strengthen and expand essential public and voluntary resources and services.
CA established a variety of precedent-setting initiatives, including the development of the first permanent rental apartments for families experiencing homelessness in Nassau County. It provided information to and worked with advocates, community organizations and public agencies and officials to support the development of safe, low-cost housing in mixed-income, integrated neighborhoods and downtowns throughout Long Island; raised public awareness about unavailable, inequitable and inadequate resources and services; and also provided closing-cost grants to dozens of first-time homebuyers, employer assistance grants to nonprofits to help lower-paid employees become homeowners, and bridge loans to nonprofit providers of housing and related services to homeless families and individuals.
Ms. Rogatz helped found the Nassau-Suffolk Coalition for the Homeless in 1988 and served as an officer and member of its executive board for 16 years. Between 1995 and 2004, she has played a leading role in helping to bring some $70 million in HUD Homeless Assistance grants and other funding to nonprofit housing and service providers on Long Island. She is a founding board member and officer of ERASE Racism, having served as Co-Chair and currently as Secretary. She served for many years on the board of the Long Island Community Foundation and on its Grants Committee. She was a founding board member and an officer of Sustainable Long Island for 10 years and a founder of the Long Island Campaign for Affordable Rental Housing. She served on the Nassau County Task Force on Homelessness, the Nassau County Panel on Next Generation Housing and as the County Executive's appointed chair of the Nassau County 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.
In January 2008, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli appointed Ms. Rogatz to serve as his representative on the Board of Directors of the State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA) where she also served as a member of the Mortgage Insurance Fund Committee and on the board of New York State Homes and Community Renewal and its Governance and Program Committees. She participated in key New York State affordable housing finance and development decisions until she retired from this appointed position in 2017.
Previously, Ms. Rogatz carried out consulting assignments in fields related to health and human services planning, delivery and evaluation and community needs assignments for New York City Mayor John Lindsay, Nassau County Executive Eugene Nickerson and Suffolk County Executives H. Lee Dennison and John Klein. She also consulted for New York City Head Start and for community hospitals and organizations in East Harlem and the South Bronx. Soon after graduating from Barnard College, she was asked to join the National Board of the Urban League and during the civil rights movement Ms. Rogatz served as a Special Assistant to James Farmer, National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
Ms. Rogatz was the recipient of numerous honors for her lifelong social justice advocacy, community activism and humanitarian service. She was a true advocate for civil rights in Nassau County, on Long Island, and across the country, and her legacy will certainly go on to move and improve the lives of people for generations to come. ERASE Racism mourns the loss of this incredible, inspiring person.