Our Mission
Housing Works is a healing community of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. Our mission is to end the dual crises of homelessness and AIDS through relentless advocacy, the provision of lifesaving services, and entrepreneurial businesses that sustain our efforts.
Our Core Values
Advocacy
Through our advocacy offices in New York City, Albany, Washington D.C. and Mississippi, Housing Works fights for funding and legislation to ensure that all people living with HIV/AIDS have access to quality housing, healthcare, HIV prevention information and other life-sustaining services, as well as legal protections from stigma and discrimination. Housing Works is also committed to the use of non-violent civil disobedience in order to further our mission to end AIDS and homelessness.
Services
We pride ourselves on the comprehensive array of services that we have provided to more than 20,000 homeless and low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS since 1990. Those services include but are not limited to housing, healthcare, meals and nutritional counseling, mental health and substance use treatment, job training, and legal assistance.
Entrepreneurial Businesses
Housing Works pioneered the concept of social enterprise–businesses whose profits fund the mission of a parent not-for-profit organization. This self-sustaining model provides employment opportunities to the community in addition to fundraising. Our acclaimed Housing Works Thrift Shops, Housing Works Bookstore Cafe and The Works Catering account for approximately 25% of our $43 million annual operating budget.
While Housing Works fights in particular for the inclusion and dignity of marginalized people, including active drug users, homeless people and sexual minorities, we advocate on behalf of all people living with AIDS and HIV, whatever their circumstances and wherever they live.
Standing with the U.N.
Housing Works’ mission stands in accord with Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that:
“Everyone has a right to standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and of his 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 control.”
