| Affiliation with other organizations: |
Housing Works currently administers a national grassroots organizing initiative to further the goals of the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA). This national grassroots organizing initiative is based on straightforward demands: treatment, prevention, research and respect. In each state, we work with local people living with HIV/AIDS, service providers and youth activists to take action at the federal, state and local level to win quality treatment and support services for all people living with HIV everywhere; enhanced HIV prevention at home and abroad, guided by science rather than ideology; research to find a cure, more effective treatments and better prevention tools; and an end to AIDS stigma and full human and civil rights for people with HIV and AIDS everywhere.
Housing Works is a member of the National AIDS Housing Coalition (NAHC)where we hold two Board seats. Were the Board Members that instituted NAHC’s HIV/AIDS Housing Research Summits. NAHC’s National Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit series provides an unprecedented venue for the presentation of research of significance to HIV/AIDS housing policy, coupled with dialogue about the public policy implications of research findings. Compelling research findings presented at all three Summit meetings demonstrate the critical significance of housing as an intervention to address both public and individual health priorities, showing strong correlations between improved housing status and reduced HIV risk, improved access to HIV medical care, and better health outcomes.
Three leading researchers have worked with NAHC to plan the summit series: Dr. Angela Aidala at Columbia University; Dr. Dennis Culhane at the University of Pennsylvania; and Dr. David Holtgrave at Johns Hopkins.
Housing Works established the International AIDS Housing Roundtable which is a forum for discussion of issues pertaining to housing instability and HIV and the provision of appropriate housing for people living with HIV and AIDS. The Roundtable is intended to promote international dialogue toward the development and implementation of public policies that recognize the critical role of housing both in the prevention of HIV transmission and in the care of people who are living with HIV and AIDS. Topics related to housing stability and HIV include, but are not limited to: slums, property and inheritance rights, mobility and migration.
For approximately three years Housing Works has been working positively led organizations to assist in building sustainable organizations to serve PLWHAs and their communities. Our work has been began in St. Marc Haiti and expanded into Port-Au-Prince upon the urging of Esther Boucicault, President of Plateforme Haitienne des Associations de PVVIH (PHAP+), a national association of Haitian AIDS groups led by people living with HIV/AIDS and Executive Director of FEBS, an AIDS Service Organization in St. Marc. When the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January, Housing Works was poised to assist people living with HIV/AIDS by working with this Haitian network.
PHAP+ established that, conservatively, more than half of the HIV/AIDS clinics in Port-au-Prince were destroyed, and there are almost no AIDS drugs available. Similarly, most family health clinics have been destroyed, and there is no primary care available for women and children. PHAP+, requested donations immediately after the first earthquake and received more than $40,000 dollars worth of medicine, food, water and other basic supplies for Haitians living with HIV/AIDS. Housing Works was able to develop an immediate structured response to assist those who could not get access to some of the mainstream resources and build an infrastructure to deliver this assistance leading a collaboration of NGOs from NY and PHAP+. |
| Purpose of the organization: |
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of him [or her] self and of his [or her] family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his [or her] control.
--Article 25, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
In keeping with Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and with the intention of bringing to an end the twin crises of homelessness and AIDS, the purpose of Housing Works is to ensure that adequate housing, food, social services, harm reduction and other drug treatment services, medical and mental health care, and employment opportunities are available to homeless persons living with AIDS and HIV and to their families as they define them. In particular, it is our purpose to serve those persons who have difficulty obtaining services elsewhere, especially those whose difficulty is a consequence of mental illness or chemical dependence.
Housing Works is a minority-led, membership-driven, community-based not-for-profit organization providing housing, healthcare, case management, job training and placement, supportive services, day treatment, and primary care to New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS and to their families.
Our mission is to reach the most vulnerable and under-served among those affected by the AIDS epidemic — those living with HIV/AIDS while struggling with homelessness, chronic mental illness, chemical dependence, and incarceration — and to help them gain stability, independence, and dignity while improving their overall health. At the heart of our work is a commitment to fight for systemic change and to demand public and private action to end the twin epidemics of HIV/AIDS and homelessness to be achieved through the following goals:
• Advocacy that aggressively challenges perceptions about homeless people living with AIDS and HIV, both within their indigenous communities and in the larger society;
• direct provision of innovative models of housing and services;
• facilitation of access to other appropriate systems of care; and
• the development and operation of entrepreneurial enterprises that support Housing Works while providing employment opportunities for the people Housing Works serves. |
| Description of the membership of the organization, indicating the total number of members: |
When Housing Works began, there were fewer than 350 units of supportive housing for the estimated 30,000 homeless people with AIDS and HIV living in New York City. Since that time, Housing Works has:
• Housed and served over 17,000 New Yorkers with HIV/AIDS;
• Won nationwide recognition for developing innovative client-centered models of housing and services for hard-to-reach populations;
• Become the nation’s leading advocate for the rights of our community through path-breaking organizing, advocacy, and litigation efforts;
• Created the nation’s most successful job training and placement program for homeless people with AIDS and HIV; and
• Pioneered the use of socially-conscious entrepreneurial ventures to achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Housing Works currently provides services to nearly 2,000 HIV-positive individuals and their families from all five boroughs of New York City while providing advocacy, organizing and public policy leadership on a citywide, statewide and nationwide basis.
Housing Works expanded our role as a national leader in HIV/AIDS advocacy, activism and outreach in the last year, while winning major victories at home.
January 2005 marked the launch of the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA), a diverse coalition of people living with HIV/AIDS and their advocates, uniting to demand that our leaders exert the political will necessary to end the AIDS pandemic, once and for all.
Housing Works is deeply committed to the C2EA movement -- as co-Chair of C2EA, Charles King, President and CEO, has traveled to 85 cities in 37 states and the District of Columbia, mobilizing thousands of first-time and veteran HIV/AIDS activists to work together in this grassroots struggle.
Housing Works has enjoyed steady growth in revenues from its entrepreneurial ventures, expanded the capacity for continued care in its AIDS adult day health care centers, and begun the construction of three new housing facilities. In the Spring of 2005 Housing Works moved its corporate office to 57 Willoughby Street in the heart of downtown Brooklyn, an important step in reaching out to the many affected communities in that borough. |
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