Common Ground’s Annual Meeting on September 18 brought together staff, Board and friends to celebrate the accomplishments of the past year and recognize three outstanding partners.

Common Ground Board Members Bruce Angiolillo, Rosanne Haggerty,
Naomi Wolfensohn and Jide Zeitlin

Highlights from 2008:

Our Street to Home program helped 223 chronically homeless people move off the street and into homes.

Nine new supportive housing projects are on track to create 1,375 new affordable homes. Our goal is to create 4,000 new affordable homes by 2015.

We have raised $3,384,377 toward our Green Campaign, a three-year, $4.3 million capital campaign to raise funds to incorporate environmentally sustainable design, construction, operating, and maintenance practices into all of our new buildings.

Our Brownsville Partnership has entered a new phase. As of January, our work is now concentrated on the Van Dyke I and II, Tilden and Brownsville public housing projects where we are supporting families and strengthening the community. In the past year we have assisted 329 families and prevented 60 from becoming homeless.

Our Veterans Transitional Residence at the Veterans Administration’s Montrose campus opened in July, providing 96 homeless veterans with housing and support recovering their health, finding work, reconnecting with family and securing a place of their own in the community.

New Executive Director of Common Ground Timothy Marx

Our Common Ground Institute has worked with colleagues in communities from New Orleans to Los Angeles to Washington to Australia to share our successful, cost-effective practices that reduce homelessness.

We have found our new Executive Director, Timothy Marx! For the past five years Tim has been Commissioner of Minnesota’s Housing Finance Agency, responsible for its cutting-edge work in supportive housing, as well as statewide housing policy and finance. Tim will join us in early November and will take over our core activities in New York, in housing development, operations and housing placement, while Common Ground president Rosanne Haggerty focuses on the Brownsville Partnership and Common Ground Institute.

Honorees:

Village Squares Quilters Guild, the Nutmeg Quilters, the Empire Quilters Guild, the Founders Hall Quilters, and the Quilting Belles.

Five groups of expert quilters from across Westchester County created beautiful, brilliantly colored, handmade quilts – one for each of the veterans moving into our Montrose Veterans Transitional Residence and others that decorate the public areas of the Residence. These 109 quilts represent 2,000 hours of artistry and generosity.

In June, many of the quilters toured the residence, and were able to see their quilts laid out on beds for the veterans about to move in. Also on display, in the entryway is the presentation quilt they created, with the names of every participating quilter.

Frances L. & Edwin L. Cummings Memorial Fund

Libby Costas and Andrew Lark accept award on behalf of
The Francis L. & Edwin L. Cummings Memorial Fund.

The Cummings Fund was an early and generous supporter of our Street to Home Initiative. Our idea was to change the way street outreach to the homeless was done, and to create a program that moved those who had been homeless the longest, from the street directly into housing. Street to Home went onto move hundreds of chronically homeless individuals into their own homes, dramatically reduce street homelessness, and become the standard of practice in the field.

The willingness of the Cummings Fund to support a new idea made this success possible. The Fund is supporting another new Common Ground initiative –- Hospital to Home, which links medically frail homeless individuals to housing and support as they are discharged from the hospital.

The Honorable Robert Hess
Commissioner, NYC Department of Homeless Services

Honoree Commissioner Rob Hess

Commissioner Hess has created a culture of innovation and results in every community he has worked. Prior to taking over New York City’s efforts in 2006, he led citywide services for the homeless in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and gained a reputation as the most effective leader of homeless services in the country. His skillful and compassionate guidance of New York’s Department of Homeless Services, and the support he provides to colleagues in many other cities, has made him one of the country’s pivotal figures on this issue.

Common Ground is fortunate to work with Commissioner Hess and his staff on many initiatives, particularly the expansion of our Street to Home program. His focus on reducing street homelessness has resulted in a 25% decrease in the last two years.

To view photos from the Annual Meeting, click here.