Crisis Services

Crisis Intervention services provide hope to 50-75 homeless men, women, and children every day with shelter advocacy, food, subway fare, diapers, formula, school supplies, medication, work uniforms and photo identification. Our counselors also connect clients with the social services and benefits for which they qualify.

Eviction Prevention keeps families intact and prevents homelessness by making grants for rent arrears to families and individuals who have experienced housing crises.

Grand Central Food Program is our mobile soup kitchen that supplies hot, nutritious meals to 800 individuals in 25 different sites every night of the year.

Client Advocacy Project helps shelter residents living with mental illnesses or other disabilities secure disability benefits and move into permanent supportive housing where they can get the care they need.

Every day, the Coalition's Crisis Intervention program provides hope to 50-75 homeless men, women, and children by giving them the help needed to tackle a multitude of problems. In addition to providing shelter advocacy, the staff offers desperately needed referrals for food, shelter, clothing, rehabilitation programs, medicine, job training, and legal representation.

We helped over 12,000 people in the last year with one-time grants for rent arrears, utilities, subway fare, diapers, formula, school supplies, medication, work uniforms, and photo identification.

Our grocery vouchers have enabled thousands of individuals to stave off the hunger that is a brutal companion to homelessness. Counselors also help reinstate improperly terminated Public Assistance benefits and connect clients with the Social Security and disability entitlements for which they qualify.

The Coalition has recently seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who are on the brink of homelessness because they are behind in paying their rent. To utilize our resources efficiently, we evaluate the situation for each applicant before making a grant to help resolve a client's rent arrears. This ensures that our assistance will solve the problem, rather than just postpone inevitable homelessness for a few months.

In helping to resolve rental arrears situations, it is our custom to broker assistance with two or three other agencies. Every dollar we provide for eviction prevention leverages up to five dollars - more than $1.5 million per year altogether - in matching contributions from public and private sources. This proactive approach to preventing homelessness keeps families intact and preserves their self-esteem.

Given the exorbitant cost of sheltering a family ($36,000 per year), Eviction Prevention is one of the most cost-effective methods available for alleviating New York's homelessness crisis.

The Grand Central Food Program (GCFP) is the Coalition's mobile soup kitchen that provides 800 hot, nutritious meals at 25 separate sites every night of the year. GCFP and its dedicated corps of volunteers form a lifeline for hundreds of homeless individuals and families as well as the poor and working poor who face hunger on a daily basis. Many long-term homeless individuals have sadly lost any hope of a new life. The most heartwarming consequence of the GCFP is that our workers gradually forge trusting relationships that help to motivate street-bound individuals to take advantage of the life-changing programs the Coalition offers.

Throughout the winter, many of the municipal shelters are at capacity and are often so unsafe that there is no alternative to sleeping on the streets. GCFP volunteers not only provide nutritious meals, but also distribute clothing, blankets, and personal hygiene items such as toiletries and underwear.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the GCFP. One example is the dedicated volunteer whose contagious compassion inspired friends and acquaintances to purchase sleeping bags for those living on the streets in the cold winter months.

Client Advocacy Project

Life in a homeless shelter not only lacks the physical and emotional security of supportive housing, but most shelters do not provide the services needed to help residents start putting their lives back together. A majority of the Client Advocacy Project's (CAP) clients are long-term shelter residents who tend to have a high rate of mental illness and other disabilities, and therefore need even more intensive services than the general shelter population.

CAP provides case management to help clients secure the disability benefits to which they are entitled, and helps them move to permanent supportive housing where they can get the care they need. Through an alliance with the Legal Aid Society, we provide legal assistance that disabled homeless individuals need.

CAP works in partnership with DHS officials and shelter administrators to identify clients in need of our assistance, and our extensive links with supportive housing agencies enable us to quickly identify available and appropriate housing.

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