lenney smith – housing from the heart
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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
