Since January, Housing Works has been mobilizing repeatedly to demand that the New York City Mayor take decisive action to end overdose deaths resulting from our worsening opioid epidemic.

In late March, we received word that the NY State Senate Republicans were proposing a huge $200 million cut in the forthcoming state budget to the Medicaid Health Home program, an initiative that has demonstrated statewide improvements in health outcomes, including reductions in inpatient hospitalization stays and emergency room use. This draconian cut would have decimated the program and left tens of thousands of low-income New Yorkers with chronic conditions including HIV/AIDS without care and services.

On Saturday, March 24, Housing Works mobilized in both DC and NYC to demand common sense gun control legislation in March For Our Lives. Overall turnout was high at both marches, with an estimated 800,000 protesters participating in DC and around 200,000 protesters in NYC. We’re especially proud that two Housing Works clients, Gregory Davis and Joseph Butcher, were interviewed at the DC march for gun control for this moving BBC video segment, “March For Our Lives: “Our Message to the World.” Check out this online album for photos and video from both marches.

In recent months, Housing Works Advocacy has mobilized hundreds in both DC and NYC to demand common sense gun control legislation in March For Our Lives; organized our community to made hundreds of phone calls and send over 180 advocates to Albany to bird-dog state elected officials to save Health Homes and push for statewide rental assistance for people with HIV; and convened hundreds at rallies, sit-in at City Hall to demand that Mayor de Blasio take action to end overdose deaths by coming out in support of Safer Consumption Sites (SCS) and releasing the SCS feasibility report commissioned by the City Council two years ago.