HousingPlus

I am applying for the Elevate Prize to highlight the needs of marginalized women in NYC, help them find their voices, and advance my work fighting for women’s rights. I would use funding to create and sustain an innovative leadership and advocacy project, Circle of Success, which will complement Housing Plus’ affordable housing and supportive services for homeless women who are of color, mothers, LGBTQ+, or survivors of violence or trauma.

The project will empower 10 women enrolled in HousingPlus’ alternative to detention/incarceration program by providing job and leadership training and employment to help them build healthy, productive lives. We will train these women to serve as community advocates to enhance justice for other women facing discrimination in housing, criminal justice, workplace, or healthcare. The project will help women to self-reflect; tell their personal story; learn to facilitate change by organizing collaboratively; and gain advocacy, public speaking, and negotiation skills. Following their education, these women will become paid community activists, advocating on a variety of women’s issues in NYC. The project trains women with lived experiences to develop strategies to address social justice issues, based on the philosophy that those who are closest to problems, create the most effective solutions.

Every family has flaws, and ours was housing insecurity. My successful recovery from addiction with help from other women inspired me to give back and support disadvantaged women.

When you think of homeless in NYC, maybe it’s a man, living alone on the street, that comes to mind. But the truth is that it is more likely to be a woman with children, struggling to make ends meet. Families of color, headed by single mothers, make-up 3/4s of the population in shelters.

My work, and the organizations that I founded, HousingPlus and the Women’s Community Justice Association, have long been on the forefront of driving reforms and transforming the lives of women experiencing homelessness and injustice. HousingPlus supplies housing and comprehensive services to women and children to support them in overcoming poverty, homelessness, addiction, trauma, and the effects of incarceration. WCJA engages in criminal (in)justice reform aimed at reducing the number of women incarcerated and furthering the stability of vulnerable females involved in criminal (in)justice systems.

My vision is to improve conditions for these women by advocating for permanent supportive housing and income stability, empowering historically-underserved women, and closing the female prison on Rikers Island in favor of community-based alternatives. 

Recently, homelessness in NYC reached the highest levels since the Great Depression. In 2020, 122,926 individuals slept in shelters, including more than 39,300 children. In January 2021, there were 55,915 homeless New Yorkers sleeping each night in shelters, which is 42% higher than ten years ago. Homelessness frequently leads to incarceration; about 50% of the women currently incarcerated on Rikers were previously homeless. 

Further, currently, there are 275 women who are unnecessarily detained on Rikers because they are homeless, low-income, and unable to make bail. These women are mostly black and brown, and survivors of lifelong trauma. Providing them with alternative to incarceration programs, with access to stable housing, education, healthcare and income, is essential. Without access to supports, they face daunting barriers to economic stability and mobility, including the stigma of justice involvement, race/gender discrimination, homelessness, poverty, and disabilities.

We have addressed the lack of housing and services for marginalized women for decades, expanding in response to growing needs in NYC. Today our eight programs serve 210 women and 154 children. In addition to offering the only transitional housing program to women at Rikers, we are also the largest provider of permanent supportive housing for female veterans in NYC.

As NYC’s most innovative nonprofits tackling these complex and deep-seated problems, our extensive experience building pioneering programs that address the gaps of the existing city shelter and justice systems distinguishes us from our peers. We uniquely focus comprehensively across the intersecting needs of services and advocacy for marginalized women in NYC.

In our early days, we developed our “housing first” model, which prioritizes access to stable housing before other goals such as income, employment, and health, with the belief that women first need a stable foundation from which to build their lives. Our wraparound supports provide ongoing services that women need to achieve housing, economic, and family stability. Our Drew House was the country’s first family alternative-to-incarceration housing program for women with children, leading to the NYC’s mayor’s office referring to our programs as “breakthrough.”

Additionally, while there is a focus today on criminal justice reform in the US and NYC, there are few initiatives delivering support and resources to these women. Our programs uniquely emphasize investing in women, creating real community, and bringing more value to their lives, rather than creating new systems in the name of justice reform that impede their progress.

Since 2002, we have successfully addressed the lack of permanent affordable housing and services for women in NYC who are underserved and marginalized, supporting 477 women and 184 children to secure safe housing and build family stability. Our expertise and lived experiences, including decades of developing programming and novel solutions for homelessness, poverty, and trauma recovery, ensure that we effectively help women access resources needed.

Perhaps the best description of our impact is a client profile:  Samantha and her family experienced five years of chronic housing insecurity after her tour of duty in the Army ended in 2014. When Samantha contacted us to ask for housing advice, she was astonished to learn that her military service and income qualified her for a multi-bedroom apartment at HousingPlus. Samantha improved her credit score, built her savings, and secured a home loan. In November 2020, her family was able to move into their new home. “If I wasn't able to live with HP these past two years and fix my finances, I never would have qualified for my loan through the VA,” she tells us. “The children love the spacious backyard and having their own bedrooms.”