Housing Works is a non-profit fighting against the dual crisis of homelessness and AIDS through advocacy and provision of services such as healthcare, housing, job training, and legal services. They operate the organization on three firm pillars: relentless advocacy, lifesaving services and entrepreneurial business. Since its inception in 1990, Housing Works has contributed to the lives of more than “30,000 homeless and low-income New Yorkers living with and affected by HIV/AIDS”.
The non-profit’s use of nonviolent civil disobedience is an important factor in its fight for legislation to secure access to services such as “information on HIV prevention, testing, treatment, as well as protection from stigma and discrimination.” In addition to this, they offer meals, nutritional counseling, treatment for substance abuse as well as mental health care.
A conversation with Tom Morris, a remarkable and dedicated Housing Works staff, offered a greater understanding of the non-profit’s history, actions and all the different people involved with this organization.
Tom started discussing the story behind Housing Works and how it came to be. He mentions that in a “nutshell” the non-profit precipitated from the “AIDS crisis […] in the early 1980s. ” ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was established as a result of “government indifference” to the outbreak of AIDS. At the same time, the housing crisis exacerbated as well, where Tom states that the people with AIDS were facing “discrimination in the housing market”.
These issues simply got worse over the years, and in the early 1990s, there were “less than 350 units of housing for an estimated 13,000 homeless individuals living with HIV/AIDS” in New York City. As a result, four key members of the Housing Committee from ACT UP took the initiative to form Housing Works. Keith Cylar, Charles King, Eric Sawyer and Virginia Shubert believed that “stable housing” ensures people with HIV/AIDS can live fully and prevent the growth of the epidemic.
A year after the non-profit was founded, it developed the Independent Living Program in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Housing Works leased apartments to those who had AIDS however didn’t meet the required diagnosis of the Center for Disease Control. The organization kept expanding housing options for its clients, and continued establishing new programs such as the Women’s Transitional Housing Program and the Scattered-Site Housing Program. Housing Works also designed the Second Life Job Training Program, where clients became staff through training in various skills such as communication, English as a second language and technology.
The non-profit’s reach however, extends far beyond the bounds of New York City. When Haiti suffered the massive earthquake in 2010, Housing Works sent $30,000 worth of supplies, staff and physicians to the capital. They even “opened clinics and studied the long term and interrelated complications of disaster relief, poverty, and HIV/AIDS.” Hence Housing Works has always shown tremendous effort in addressing the AIDS/HIV crisis across the globe.
Furthermore, Housing Works differs greatly from other organizations focused on fighting HIV/AIDS, where Tom elaborates that “Housing Works has […] the physical presence of all these thrift stores and the bookstore cafe, and it gets media coverage and it gets noticed by the public because there are these storefronts all over the cities.” These thrift stores have contributed immensely to Housing Works’ cause, as their annual revenue across 12 thrift stores at the end of 2016, was $16.1 million.
The first thrift opened up in 1992 in Chelsea, and Tom mentions how the people leaving Chelsea neighborhoods as a result of the crisis were “leaving behind households of very good stuff and a lot of those people were working in the creative fields, fashion, design, theatre and so on”. This entrepreneurial enterprise led to the conception of Housing Works’ Bookstore Cafe in Soho.
What started as a “Used Book Cafe” transformed into an integral source of revenue for the organization. Tom recounts how “it opened in 1998, so it’s 20 years old this year. It’s always been donation based, the event venue roll has evolved and developed” where he refers to the book launches, readings, discussions, weddings and private events the Bookstore Cafe hosts. He points to their successful internet sales as well – “also remember in 1998, the internet was a baby so the online sales didn’t exist, that started slowly and gained momentum and grew” and “at least in some periods the internet division sales outpaced the bookstore’s”.
Despite the floods of donations the Bookstore Cafe receives on a daily basis, there are still big challenges the staff faces every day. Tom conveys regarding to everything that’s donated, “roughly 70% of what we take in is useless” and it’s difficult to know that all that “time, and energy and space that we are spending on […] processing donations” doesn’t always contribute to the books on the shelves.
Nonetheless, this makes up for the fact that Tom along with other staff members, love “working with volunteers and other staff and as a team, serving customers on many levels with finding things, helping them find what they’re looking for” and although sometimes customers may not find what they came in for, they usually “end up leaving with other things.”
Tom also elaborates on the importance of the volunteers’ contribution, emphasizing how “volunteers have always been a very important part of the business model because there’s no way the bookstore could do everything with paid staff. That’s how I started, that’s how a lot of staff started as volunteers”. He highlights the shared love of books and customer service is important to making Housing Works what it is today.
He concludes the conversation by saying “in this part of the city which has changed a lot over 20 years, [Housing Works is] kind of an oasis, in the intersection of Broadway and Houston is so busy and congested and we’re right around the corner, it’s nice to know that people are going to get this”.
Charles King, one of the founders of Housing Works, along with other influential activists, assembled the Blueprint to End the Aids Epidemic in New York State by 2020, which Governor Cuomo accepted in 2015. This Blueprint aims to decrease new HIV infections to fewer than 750 in two years.
As a part of its AIDS-FREE Campaign, Housing Works also wants to eradicate the AIDS epidemic in the United States by 2025, and worldwide by 2030, which is only possible through “the political will of governments, coordination between health agencies at all levels, and the energy and dedication of AIDS activists, doctors, researchers, service providers, and communities affected by HIV/AIDS.”
Housing Works Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Housing Works Thrift Store locations, Facebook, Twitter.
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe location: 126 Crosby St, New York, NY 10012, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.