Nonprofit of the Year: Housing: Critical Response

The Supportive Housing Network of New York is a nonprofit membership organization representing more than 220 nonprofit organizations that run 52,000 units of supportive housing across the state. As the only supportive housing membership organization in New York, the Network serves as a voice for the provider community, which has created the largest, best-managed, and most innovative supportive housing stock in the nation. Its membership also includes almost 180 affiliate agency and corporate members.

Founded in 1988, The Network’s mission is to increase the public’s understanding of supportive housing; share best practices that continually improve supportive housing’s effectiveness; and, most importantly, encourage the creation of enough supportive housing to end homelessness among the most vulnerable New Yorkers. The Network works toward these goals through advocacy, training, technical assistance, public education, research, and policy analysis. As the largest member organization of its kind in the United States, the Network is the leading national voice for supportive housing.

Working with city and state agencies and supportive housing providers and developers, the Network is the connective tissue among stakeholders, and has a productive working partnership with government agencies involved in supportive housing in New York State.

One of the Network’s primary goals is to foster community and information sharing among members, convening workgroups, roundtables, and advocacy groups in addition to hosting events: an annual conference, which is the largest gathering of supportive housing stakeholders in the country; the Network Friday Forum series; and an Annual Awards gala.

In recent years, the Network and its allies have been extremely successful advocating for the expansion of supportive housing creation. They were an essential force in the successful implementation of the 9,000-unit NY/NY III city-state supportive housing agreement that was signed in 2005. They also led efforts that resulted in the creation of the Medicaid Redesign Team Supportive Housing Program, which invested more than $600 million in supportive housing. And their co-leadership of Campaign 4 NY/NY Housing—a three-year education, media, and advocacy effort—won city and state commitments to create 35,000 new units of supportive housing over 15 years. For the past four years, The Network has been engaged in a multi-year initiative to ensure these two commitments (known as the Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative and NYC 15/15) are realized, and that they protect the model, continue to serve the most vulnerable populations and preserve nonprofit primacy in the development, ownership, and operation of supportive housing.