of AIDS and homelessness.
Housing prevents AIDS.
Housing improves health.
Housing Works strives to ensure that homeless and low-income people living with HIV/AIDS and their families have adequate housing, food, social support, drug treatment, health care, and employment. Housing Works is especially committed to serving those who have difficulty obtaining services elsewhere because they struggle with mental illness or chemical dependency.
Housing Works seeks to achieve its goals in the context of a self-sustaining, healing community that maximizes the potential of the people living with HIV/AIDS whom it serves. Our mission stands in accord with Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that:
"Everyone has the right to a 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."
OUR STRATEGY
Housing Works serves homeless and low-income people living with HIV/AIDS in three primary ways:
- The provision of a comprehensive array of direct services, including housing, medical care, nutritional assistance, job training, mental health care, and drug treatment
- Aggressive advocacy in opposition to policies and institutions harmful to people living with HIV/AIDS and aggressive advocacy in support of policies and institutions aimed at improving the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS
- The creation and operation of social enterprise businesses that provide vital financial support to Housing Works and invaluable employment opportunities for our clients
OUR ORIGINS
Incorporated as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization in 1990, Housing Works grew out of the AIDS activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). A handful of ACT UP members realized that grassroots organizing and civil disobedience were not enough to spur the government to take responsibility for the 30,000 homeless dying from AIDS in New York City at the time. Those activists began looking for new strategies to provide life-sustaining housing and services to those in need. Housing Works was born. In 1990, fewer than 350 units of housing existed for homeless people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City. Since then, Housing Works has:
- Provided a range of lifesaving and empowering services to more than 19,000 New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS
- Won international recognition for innovative models of housing and services for hard-to-reach populations
- Become the nation's leading advocate for the rights of homeless people living with HIV/AIDS through bold organizing, advocacy, and litigation efforts
- Created the nation's most successful job training program for homeless people living with HIV/AIDS
- Pioneered the use by nonprofits of entrepreneurial ventures to achieve economic self-sufficiency
Today, Housing Works is the largest grassroots AIDS service organization in the United States. We are also the nation's largest minority-controlled AIDS service organization.
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