In 2011, thanks to your support, BCHS...
•Opened the Brooklyn Housing Assistance Center, a new demonstration effort focused on preventing homelessness
•Found and provided housing for 728 women, children and men who had been homeless
•Reduced hospitalizations for agency seniors by 96%, by providing special wellness groups, nursing services and geriatric case management
In 2012, your generous support will help BCHS...
•Open the Navy Green SRO, a 97-unit housing partnership with Pratt Area Community Council, Dunn Development Corp., and L&M Development Partners
•Expand the Working Community vocational program by providing job training, computer instruction and career guidance to more than 700 Brooklyn residents
•Prevent homelessness for 100 households in the Borough through the new Brooklyn Housing Assistance Center
It takes a community. This simple belief is at the heart of Brooklyn Community Housing and Services’ (BCHS) Brooklyn Gardens program. What was once a crumbling, abandoned building in the middle of Fort Greene was lovingly renovated to provide daily housing – and a community – for 180 formerly homeless women, children and men.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of BCHS’ dedicated staff, Board, and supporters, over 1,000 individuals who had been homeless have found stability, independence, and hope at Brooklyn Gardens since the complex opened 20 years ago.
Mr. Santos has coffee every morning with a few of his fellow residents, and they engage in friendly but spirited debate about sports, politics and whatever else has made the morning news. Then Mr. Santos heads off to his job, delivering packages and mail five days a week.
On the weekends Mr. Santos helps tend the many plants and flowerbeds in the Brooklyn Gardens courtyard; during holidays he visits his children and grandchildren in North Carolina, who smile with joy when he tells their favorite jokes and shares his latest stories about the “big city.”
Mr. Santos has lived successfully at Brooklyn Gardens since just after the building opened – he had previously been sleeping on park benches and the street, afraid for his life, struggling with a serious but undiagnosed mental illness.
“ Brooklyn Gardens saved me,” Mr. Santos says. “It’s home."
Like Brooklyn Gardens, all of BCHS’ housing and services reflect the central idea that when individuals are isolated they are at their most vulnerable, but as part of a community they thrive.
Along these lines I am happy to report that:
- Each of BCHS’ core programs has achieved outstanding outcomes in 2011;
- BCHS is part of a team that will be opening new supportive housing in March 2012 for 97 at-risk individuals, called the Navy Green SRO; and
- BCHS recently launched the Brooklyn Housing Assistance Center, which offers help and services to people in Brooklyn who are facing a one-time crisis that has put their housing in jeopardy.
It is the compassion and thoughtfulness of friends like you that makes our work possible. Please consider a donation to BCHS this holiday season so we can help many more people like Mr. Santos move from crisis to community in the year ahead. Thank you for your support, and for being part of the effort to end homelessness in Brooklyn.
On behalf of everyone at Brooklyn Community Housing and Services, I wish you and your loved ones a very happy and healthy New Year!
Sincerely,
Jeff Nemetsky
Executive Director