lenney smith - housing from the heart
Sr. VP for Prevention and Services, Housing Works
Finding housing in New York is difficult to do, especially if you have AIDS. For those living with AIDS, housing options are scarce, yet essential to survival. Housing Works and their senior VP for prevention and services, Lenney Smith, are providing hope and alternatives for the HIV/AIDS-afflicted community of New York City.
“Housing is very important,” Smith explains. “We connect our clients with transition housing and permanent housing because they need to have a bed, and a stove and a roof.”
Housing Works is a community-based organization that provides housing, health care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS. They are also an activist organization, which means they get involved in litigation and activism on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS. “Our services have even evolved into job training and an employment program, which is [one of the] top rated employment programs in the nation,” boasts Smith. Housing Works also offers counseling and testing for those who do not know their health status.
Smith and Housing Works are located in Brooklyn because of the high number of AIDS in the borough. “Of all [of] New York’s HIV/AIDS cases, most occur in Brooklyn, and women of Brooklyn are more likely to be infected and die from HIV than any other borough,” she says.
Housing Works has recently built a facility in Harlem that will be open to single individuals and families — call it a manifestation of their commitment to the AIDS community in New York.
- delgie jones II
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