We visited Stacey Cedeno, a member of New York City’s Department of Homeless Services.

Last Wednesday my group met with Stacey Cedeno from the New York City Department of Homeless Services. We learned of some government based projects like Home Base, an outreach problem to help poor families stay in their homes. Home base does not help homeless people, but directs them to transitional housing in other organizations. We were given pamphlets to hand out and to broadcast the message of Home Base throughout our homes. People can go to the Home Base buildings in their borough to receive information or help. Although we learned that there are a set of requirements for those they help, Home Base is able to help more than 90 percent of those that show up at their doors.We also received information about Hope Counts which is a program for counting the number of homeless people in New York. Hope Counts takes people, especially people from various schools, around in vans to count the people living on the street. We are exploring the opportunity of helping the program in January. My group and I hope that we can recruit some others from LREI to join us on this excursion.
Stacey gave us many pamphlets and door hangings that broadcast the Home Base locations and services. We are in the midst of finding places to spread the word. We are going to bring some to St. John’s food pantry and maybe other food kitchens we visit. We hope to hear back from Ms. Cedeno soon, and we will ask around for extra information.

Department of Homeless Services website: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dhs/html/home/home.shtml