Care For the Homeless

A Break Well Spent After hours of studying for mid-terms and adding the final touches to projects, the most euphoric thing a college student looks forward to, is their spring break vacation. Many choose to indulge in the tranquility of warm beaches and enjoy cool, salty swims. Others opt for colder temperatures, flying on skis at breakneck speeds. And some simply enjoy the cozy comforts of home. A break is a break though, no matter how one chooses to spend it. The same cannot be said for those participating in a different option offered by many schools, known as Alternative Spring Break (ASB). Students partaking in these programs sacrifice their vacation, and instead, choose to spend their week away from school learning about timely and significant social issues. This past week, about a dozen students from Rice University in Houston, Texas made the 1,600+ mile journey to New York City, to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the intersection between mental health ...

Please join us in welcoming our two newest members of the Board of Directors. Harry K. Thomas began his diplomatic career in 2003, when he was appointed as the United States Ambassador to Bangladesh. Over the course of his nearly 15-year career, he would also serve as Ambassador to the Philippines and Zimbabwe. In between ambassador roles, Thomas also served as Director General of the Foreign Service and as Executive Secretary and Special Assistant to Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. On his new role with CFH, Thomas commented, “I joined the Board because I believe that 'we the people’ can and must, solve the challenges that homelessness presents. I know that the world's wealthiest nation can improve our homeless sisters and brothers lives. CFH is the leading organization that is working to overcome this obstacle in NYC, my hometown. I will work with the Board Members to broaden the depth and breadth of CFH's reach and outcomes.” Joining Thomas i...

Small Town, Big Heart From Left, Team Members Lexi Flick, Ashley Stewart, Captain Tina Flick,   CFH Development Associate Brian Myers, and Themla Stewart. Sixty-five miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania lies the small town of Rimersburg. Settled in 1829 and incorporated in 1853, the town is home to just a little under 900 residents. Small numbers haven’t prevented its population from making big, charitable impacts. Clarion County, where Rimersburg is located, hosts an annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s. This past year, the 20 teams and 147 participants managed to raise over $27,000 for their cause. Right at the top of the list of donors was Memory Lane’s Forget-Me-Nots, who raised nearly $4,000 of the total. The team is made up of captain Tina Flick and seven other members.  The biggest portion of that amazing total is raised in New York City. Flick and her team have been making the journey here for the past two years. This is a big feat in and of it...

With an all-too familiar feel to it, we’re heading towards a Washington fiscal cliff with scant reason to imagine an increasingly divided Congress being able to hit the brakes to avoid it. The House and Senate spending gap in their “appropriations bills in progress” is $91 billion. The two houses of Congress aren't even operating on a shared premise. The House assumes current sequestration levels as a baseline and delivers another more sequestration cuts. Worse, they abandon shared pain between military and domestic appropriations, applying even larger sequestration cuts only to domestic spending. The Senate assumes no added sequestration in the coming budget and essentially rolls back the current fiscal year’s sequestration, too. The fiscal new year, October 1, is in sight. Reaching October 1 with no resolution leaves the government without authority to spend on “non-essential” programs. That’d “shut down government” for most programs. It would quickly affect health and...

Sunday, Care for the Homeless participated in the annual AIDS Walk NYC through Central Park. Walking with staff, clients and volunteers, we joined more than 30,000 other walkers on the street of Manhattan. We walked to take a stand for the homeless New Yorkers we serve who are dealing with the disease. Care for the Homeless works with homeless HIV-positive individuals and people living with AIDS everyday.  The importance of HIV education can not be understated, and our Health Education and Social Services teams work diligently to ensure our clients are tested as well as informed on how to stay safe from contracting HIV. Find out more about our HIV services HERE . For more pictures from our walk, check out our Facebook page and be sure to join us next year in walking and raising money to find a cure.

In April, The Health Education Department focused on Alcohol Awareness, Weight Management and Physical Activity. Health Educator Gabriela Gonzales Movies! Movies! Movies! were the method of choice for our Alcohol Awareness Campaign for both teens and adults. Health Educator Gabriela Gonzales screened “The Social Network” with her teen groups, encouraging discussion about responsible use of alcohol. At Susan’s Place, clients were treated to a 4 part movie series beginning with the movie “Flight." Care for the Homeless’ substance abuse counselor joined the Health Education team in leading discussion on alcohol and other substance use, abuse and recovery. At Susan’s Place and Peter Jay Sharp Center for Opportunity, the Health Educators got clients moving! The women of Susan’s Place were split into two groups, slow walkers and fast walkers. Each individual was given a pedometer and encouraged to walk in “The Tortoise vs. the Hare Walking Competition”. Each individual’...

Care for the Homeless is co-sponsoring one of City Limits “Tackling Poverty Discussion Series,” about homelessness, shelters and the community. It’s free, but you have to RSVP in advance (see below). Collaborators in the event, in addition to Care for the Homeless, include BronxWorks, Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness (ICPH), and the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing. The program is scheduled for Thursday, May 16, from 6:30 p.m. until 8 p.m., and will be followed by a free networking reception celebrating the launch of City Limits’ Bronx Bureau. Both the forum and reception will be held at the Bronx Museum of the Arts located at 1040 Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The event program will include comments by Scott Auwarter of BronxWorks, Ralph da Costa Nunez of the ICP, Robin Hood Foundation Managing Director Eric Weingartner and Camella Pinkney-Price of the Bronx Borough President’s office. City Limits Editor Jarrett Murphy is moderating the program....

Care for the Homeless client leader Gayle Dorsky, and CFH Policy Director Jeff Foreman, appeared before an emergency hearing of the Council General Welfare Committee on Friday to testify about the plight of Hurricane Sandy evacuees still without stable housing, and the needs of tens of thousands of homeless New Yorkers. They spoke up for the Sandy victims still homeless, displaced through no fault of their own. But they also spoke for other people experiencing homelessness. Client leader Gayle Dorsky The emergency hearing drew an overflow crowd, many of whom had to watch portions of the hearing by closed-circuit in an adjoin room, as well as ten members of Council, two who weren't even members of that committee. Presided over by Chairwoman Annabel Palma, the four hour meeting included testimony by city Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond, as well advocates like Care for the Homeless and Hurricane Sandy victims, about 196 of whom are facing a May...

Be sure to head over to Treasure & Bond in SoHo to vote for Care for the Homeless! We are a semi-finalist this year to be the nonprofit beneficiary of Treasure & Bond, Nordstrom’s Corporate Giving Program. We need you to Get Out & Vote and help Care for the Homeless win! Visit Treasure & Bond any day in the month of April to vote for CFH. ·         No purchase necessary. ·          You can vote as many times as you want during the month of April. ·          If selected, Care for the Homeless will receive between $15,000 and $30,000 to support our pediatric homeless health care program. Store hours and directions: Treasure & Bond 350 West Broadway (between Broome and Grand) – click here for a map Store Hours:       Monday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m Sunday, 11 p.m. – 7 p.m. Voting runs April 1 thr...

Over this last weekend, “CNN Money” ran a feature report it calls “Paying to House NYC’s Homeless,” but it’s really an endorsement of part of the Care for the Homeless Agenda to End Homelessness . Not that they talk about us or our plan - but what they say supports our advocacy for a transitional rental subsidy program to move homeless families and individuals from streets and shelters to permanent housing, because we can’t end homelessness in New York City without it. CNN reports “New York City used to have a rental assistance program that cost $10,000 a year per family. But that program was cut, and taxpayers now pay more than twice that to house a family in shelter.” In fact, city taxpayers now pay more than three times the cost of the former Advantage rental subsidy to house families in temporary shelters rather than helping people rent permanent housing. And CNN reports the homeless population in the city shelter system has increased 60% in the last decade. The CNN report in...

The rally brought together more than 200 supporters, advocating for the rights of homeless men, women & children in New York City. As one of the founding organizations, Care for the Homeless helped launch a new advocacy group Tuesday on the steps of New York City Hall. It’s called “United to End Homelessness” and the rally drew more than 200 supporters, according to UEH organizers, promoting solutions to the city’s homelessness crisis and asking that every Mayoral and City Council candidate in 2013 learn about homelessness and take a stand on what policies they’ll support to end it. The rally at City Hall represents thousands of advocates associated with 119 organizations that have now endorsed the United to End Homelessness platform. As a founder and coordinating committee member for the new, nonpartisan, advocacy coalition, Care for the Homeless was well represented at the rally. One of the 5 featured speakers at the rally was a Care for the Homeless client, Philip J. M...

Several Care for the Homeless clients and staff traveled to Washington, D.C., last Friday, to meet with members of the New York Congressional delegation or their staff to ask for support of programs and human services vital to homeless and poor people. These issues hold a special importance right now as the U.S. Senate and House are working on government funding for the remainder of the federal fiscal year, through September 30, 2013.  We were able to meet with New York Representatives or staff in the offices of Representatives Nydia Velazquez, Hakeem Jeffries, Jose Serrano, Charles Rangel, Bill Owens and Nita M. Lowey. Funding cutbacks pose a real and imminent threat to programs homeless and poor people count on including health and human services for homerless people, funding for AIDS testing and services, mental health funding, substance abuse treatment, and virtually every program for housing, tenant assistance and affordable housing. It threatens grants for homeless chil...

Care for the Homeless Executive Director Bobby Watts brought more than 800 delegates to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council Conference in Washington, D.C., to their feet with a declaration that “Homelessness is evil, and we must end it.”  Watts, in the conference’s keynote address, said, “we have to stop accepting the unacceptable, tolerating the intolerable, and end the evil of homelessness.” “It was public policies that created modern day homelessness,” Watts said, “and we can end homelessness with better public and social policies.” Watts noted that “modern day homelessness” is only about 35 years old, and tracks with federal cutbacks in spending on affordable housing for very-low-income tenants and cutbacks to human service and safety net programs. Watts spoke about asking college classes what they thought the causes of homelessness were, and getting answers including individuals became homelessness because they had mental problems, significant health pr...

The Care for the Homeless Health Education team is always busy, but in February, the team had three large-scale initiatives they implemented at many of our service sites.  Teen Dating Violence and Healthy Relationships Workshops were delivered to: •        Increase understanding of teen dating abuse •        Identify and define roles of abuse •        Identify warning signs of an abusive partner •        Explore reasons why people stay in abusive relationships •        Increase help-seeking behavior among teens involved in abusive dating relationships •        Promote healthier approaches to dating relationships and conflicts •        Help teens understand their rights and responsibilities in a relationship. HIV Awareness Workshop delivered to: •...