A new Common Ground building has opened in central Melbourne. Elizabeth Street Common Ground is the first of its kind in the state of Victoria and just the second in Australia.
It was officially opened by the Federal Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek and the Victorian Premier John Brumby together with HomeGround Services CEO and Australian [...]

SignOn San Diego
Michael Stetz
August 31, 2010
A major effort to identify and assist the homeless who live on the streets of downtown San Diego will take place in September.
Called the Downtown San Diego Registry Week, the initiative goes beyond past efforts that have tried to get a grip on this growing social problem, organizers say.
“We’re going [...]

Southern California Public Radio
August 2, 2010
In 2007 Los Angeles County started up a new program with the goal of taking a different look and a different approach to the persistent problem of chronic homelessness in Southern California. The program was “Project 50,” which would identify the 50 most vulnerable and needy members of L.A.’s homeless [...]

Huffington Post
Mark Horvath
July 16, 2010
100,000 homes for 100,000 of the most vulnerable homeless Americans by July 2013!
Probably sounds like normal political crap to most. But I can personally tell you I believe it’s going to happen and that Common Ground can do it! Well, I must correct that last sentence. Yes, Common Ground is [...]

Common Ground President Rosanne Haggerty announced the launch of the “100,000 Homes Campaign”, an effort to house 100,000 long term and vulnerable homeless by July of 2013, at 1:30 p.m., Monday, July 12, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Ave NW in Washington, D.C.

The “100,000 Homes Campaign”, a nationwide effort to [...]

This June, Common Ground president Rosanne Haggerty, Times Square Building Director Seth Lamar and Frederick Malone, a tenant at The Christopher, attended the launch of the new Arlington residence in London.
Opened by Boris Johnson, the refurbished iconic London landmark, Arlington will be a UK flagship scheme for a new era in community living.
The vision [...]

Wall Street Journal Magazine
June 10, 2010
Alastair Gordon
Most homeless shelters don’t have ballrooms. Walking into the elegant lobby of New York’s old Prince George Hotel, with its richly hued woodwork, feels like you’ve entered some Merchant Ivory movie, not a residence for displaced individuals. It’s the surprising creation of Rosanne Haggerty, founder and director of the [...]

Brisbane Times
June 6, 2010
Kate Dennehy
Homeless man Jason in West End. Photo: Michelle Smith
Jason is one of Brisbane’s 350 rough sleepers but he hopes to become a happier statistic soon, thanks to a campaign aimed at housing those who are chronically homeless.
From Tuesday morning, volunteers in the 50 Lives 50 Homes campaign, coordinated by the [...]

Hartford Courant
May 27, 2010
Dan Haar
Tamarra Carson, 32, has lived in a three-bedroom corner apartment in the Billings Forge complex in Hartford for two years. She has three kids and also works there, at The Kitchen at Billings Forge. (Bettina Hansen / The Hartford Courant)
As Tamarra Carson stands in the doorway of The Kitchen, a bakery [...]

Sydney Morning Herald
May 25, 2010
Lisa Martin
Homeless women are vulnerable and terrified of being attacked in cities across Australia and the community must open its heart to them, the Prime Minister’s wife says.
Therese Rein was guest speaker at Brisbane’s St John’s Cathedral annual Loaves and Fishes luncheon on Tuesday.
The cathedral was transformed into a fisherman’s wharf [...]

The Leader to Leader Institute named Common Ground “Innovation of the Week” in their May newsletter.
In this week’s Innovation, we recognize Common Ground.
“I found myself clinging to the shelter and calling that home, but having the key to do as I please in my own environment is a far cry from clocking in and [...]

Los Angeles Times
By Alexandra Zavis
May 12, 2010
Cataloging them and their needs helps speed social services to those most at risk, officials say. Similar efforts in New York, Santa Monica and Long Beach have helped hundreds into permanent housing.

Before dawn one recent morning, volunteers clutching clipboards and flashlights spotted a pile of blankets on an otherwise [...]

City Messenger
Emily Charrison
May 13, 2010
A city housing development for homeless and low-income earners has been given a multimillion dollar funding boost by Adelaide businesses.
Oil and gas company Santos is donating $3 million towards Common Ground’s latest projects a 52-apartment complex in Light Square and 40 apartments in Pt Augusta over the next three years.
Candetti Constructions [...]

ParkLabrea/Beverly News
Ian Lovett
April 29, 2010

We drove east down Hollywood Boulevard, north on Grammercy Place, west on Franklin Avenue, peering out the windows of the van, looking for people on the street.
Finally, Stephanie spotted someone on the far side of the road.
“I don’t think he’s homeless,” Rudy said. “It sounds really corny, but I look at [...]

Huffington Post
Lloyd I. Sederer, MD
April 26, 2010
Greg Jackson, now 59, was drafted by the New York Knicks in 1974 after they had won the NBA Finals. He began playing with Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe and Phil Jackson — a dream for a young black man from Brooklyn. Then Jackson decided to [...]

Hartford Business Journal
Gregory Seay
April 26, 2010

Downtown Hartford’s newest residential building appears to have tapped an underserved sliver of the urban housing market. The Hollander’s model apartment overlooking Bushnell Park and the Capitol.
The Hollander Foundation Center, 410 Asylum St., opposite Bushnell Park, has signed takers for its 56 apartments priced at below market monthly rents of [...]

Examiner.com
Joel John Roberts
April 23, 2010
I’m sitting in an office conference room right on the infamous corner of Hollywood and Vine. You have to literally walk over Hollywood’s Walk of Fame to get into the building.
I actually think I stepped on Marlon Brandon’s star weaving around a group of emo kids looking like they were waiting [...]

Brisbane Times
Kate Dennehy
April 25, 2010
Something seems fishy when politicians from different camps and everyone from developers to the homeless start working together.
But that’s what’s happening in the redevelopment of Gambaro’s Seafood Market at South Brisbane, with the location to become a New York-style apartment block for the poor and homeless.
Queensland Community Services and Housing [...]

City South News
Karen Cooley
April 21, 2010
A South Brisbane street is set to live up to its name by providing accommodation for the homeless.
Hope St is the site of a 146-unit supportive housing development, based on the Common Ground model from New York City.
The Brisbane Supportive Housing Initiative will be built on a site that includes [...]

WNPR Connecticut
Jeff Cohen
April 15, 2010
To listen to the story, click here.
A new apartment complex in an old downtown Hartford building.
The remaking of Downtown Hartford is a decade-old project that needs new residents to succeed. Its highest-profile building is Hartford 21, an apartment tower that boasts luxury as a selling point. But just blocks [...]

Hartford Courant
Kenneth R. Gosselin
April 13, 2010
Determined to bring grocery shopping to downtown Hartford, the nonprofit group that has renovated the historic building at 410 Asylum St. for housing isn’t waiting to find the right operator for a market.
In the next month, Common Ground will launch a grocery “buying club” that allows members — primarily downtown [...]

Examiner.com
Joel John Roberts
April 10, 2010
While Los Angeles continues to search for hard-to-count people as part of the US Census effort, the community of Hollywood is planning an extensive homeless survey of its own called the Hollywood Homeless Registry Week.
Stakeholders from Hollywood, however, will not be merely counting heads. Community volunteers will carry a six-page survey [...]

NPR Michigan Radio
Sarah Cwiek
April 9, 2010
Advocates for the homeless say cities like Detroit could save money by helping people get shelter.
A coalition of Detroit-area groups and the New York-based non-profit Common Ground say gathering data about the homeless population is key to helping people transition off the streets.
The groups canvassed Detroit streets this week to [...]

Detroit Free Press
Cecil Angel
April 9, 2010
Dennis Moore was in tears outside a Highland Park homeless shelter early Thursday as he recounted how his landlord collected his rent, shut off the electricity then forced him and other tenants to move.
“It makes me want to commit suicide, but I’m trying not to do it,” said Moore, 52, [...]

Detroit Free Press
Joe Rossiter
April 9, 2010
The just released findings in a survey of homeless people in the Detroit area indicate that 51% of those questioned are at risk of dying on the streets — a 9% increase above the national average.
Neighborhood Service Organization, along with several Detroit-area homeless service providers fanned out across the cities [...]

ClickOn Detriot
April 8, 2010
Volunteers Seek Out Detroit’s Homeless
For the past three days, volunteers have been canvassing Detroit streets in search of the city’s most vulnerable homeless residents.
Surveys began Tuesday in Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck.
The Neighborhood Service Organization in Detroit and homeless service providers are working with New York’s Common Ground on the program.
Anyone found [...]

Examiner.com
March 2, 2010
Sandi Stroud
The former Malta Square Nursing Home is to be UNITY/ Common Ground’s model project
The homeless population in New Orleans may have been difficult to quantify pre-Katrina but it has certainly been close to impossible to determine the full extent in Katrina’s aftermath. Attributed to squatters living in abandoned buildings and on the [...]

WCNC Charlotte
by NewsChannel 36 Staff
February 26, 2010
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A study released Friday by the Urban Ministry Center shows Charlotte’s homeless problem is worse than estimated.
Volunteers interviewed 841 chronically homeless people. The center defines chronically homeless as those who have been homeless for more than year or four times in three years.
The center had [...]

Charlotte Observer
by Mark Price
February 27, 2010
Charlotte has nearly double the national average of homeless people visiting hospitals more than three times a year - and experts say it’s costing the community millions.
That fact is one of many revelations from a ground-breaking survey conducted this week by the Urban Ministry Center.
Specifically, the effort sought out the [...]

NPR Charlotte 90.7 FM
Julie Rose
Friday February 26, 2010
There are about 6,500 homeless men, women and children in Charlotte. Advocates think some 500 of those people are chronically homeless, meaning they’ve been on the street for at least a year. But that was just a guess. So this week, the Charlotte Housing Authority spent $10,000 on [...]

Charlotte Observer
Mark Price
February 24, 2010
One of the nation’s most ambitious homeless surveys has been launched this week in Charlotte - not just to count them, but to determine who they are, where they came from, and if they’re at risk of dying on the streets.
Teams of volunteers intend to interview more than 1,000 homeless people [...]

Aurora Sentinel
February 15, 2010
Associated Press
A Denver program aimed at ending homelessness says 44 percent of homeless respondents in a recent
survey have conditions that could put them at a higher risk of dying prematurely if left on the streets.
The national average is around 42 percent, Denver’s Road Home said.
A team of homeless outreach workers and volunteers [...]

Denver Post
February 16, 2010
Associated Press
Nearly half of Denver’s homeless people have a chronic disease, mental illness or other condition that puts them at higher risk of dying prematurely, according to a survey by Denver’s Road Home.
The survey, by the organization dedicated to ending homelessness in the city, also found that 55 respondents, or 20 percent, [...]

KCFR Colorado Public Radio
February 16, 2010
Listen to an interview with Becky Kanis, Director of Innovations at Common Ground, who describes the use of the Vulnerability Index in Denver, Colorado.
Click here.

Denver Business Journal
February 15, 2010
A survey last week of Denver’s homeless population found that 44 percent are at risk of dying prematurely if left on the streets, slightly higher than the national at-risk rate.
The survey of 276 homeless people on the streets and in overflow shelters was conducted by a team of about 50 outreach [...]

9News.com
February 13, 2010
Lori Obert/Corey Rose
To watch the video, click here.
DENVER - Denver has an ambitious goal: to end homelessness by 2015. There are more than 3,900 homeless people in the Denver area.
A couple of local organizations believe the first step to ending homelessness is to learn as much as possible about who these people really [...]

Downtown Hartford’s latest project takes shape on Asylum street.
Hartford Magazine
November 2009
It started several years ago - rounding up all the pieces and players that would go into the $22 million rehabilitation of a long-vacant historic building with a stunning view of the State Capitol. But now that the work at 410 Asylum Street is complete, [...]

Hartford Advocate
January 12, 2010
New Haven is the closest to getting one. There’s nothing on the horizon yet in Bridgeport. And the picture in Hartford is hopeful but tinged with failure. We’re talking downtown grocery stores, essential to the health and vitality of Connecticut’s three major urban areas.
Read more.

By Kenneth R. Gosselin
The Hartford Courant
December 23, 2009
Three years ago, downtown Hartford appeared to be on the verge of getting a grocery store at Hartford 21.
Today, the space is still dark.
But while all eyes have been on Hartford 21, another plan for a grocer has been quietly percolating at a spot that’s a two-minute walk [...]

September 11, 2009
Auggie V’s Green Blog
You knew it was only be a matter of time before someone with a great plan would incorporate a green roof onto a building’s rooftop in downtown Hartford. Yesterday afternoon, I was invited to attend the installation of Hartford’s first green roof at 410 Asylum Street or what is [...]

Sarah Gallagher, executive director of Journey Home, a nonprofit organization charged with implementing Hartford’s regional 10-year plan to end homelessness, wants to use that face-to-face interaction. Later this week, Gallagher and other advocates will meet to talk about instituting something called a vulnerability survey, where volunteers survey each homeless person — in shelters and on the street. The most vulnerable — those at most risk of dying unhoused — get housing.

Based on research by people like Dr. Jim O’Connell of Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program, the index identifies people by looking at how often a person has visited a hospital recently, the age of the person, general health (the possibility of cirrhosis, end-stage renal disease, and effects of the cold such as frostbite). Volunteers also ask about HIV/AIDS and psychiatric conditions.

Something about talking about life and death gets wheels turning, and information gained from the index has resulted in vulnerable people being housed nationwide, said Becky Kanis, of Common Ground, which trains people to use the index.

As she looked out the window of her room in the Senator Hotel on Main Street, the first home she’s had in nearly a decade, 53-year-old Lucy Patricia Evans barely remembered the night that changed her life.

The memories are blurred, in large part because of the drugs and alcohol that were in her system at the time. She remembered accepting the food coupon, smiling when they asked to take her picture, and making a simple request.

“Make sure you take my good side,” she recalled saying to the group that was surveying the streets of Skid Row, looking for the area’s most vulnerable homeless people. She turned out to be one of them.

Deported two years ago to a country she knew only as a child, 22-year-old Monica Diaz has returned to Oregon — legally.

Her mother and brother remain in Guatemala after the family lost a decade-old battle for political asylum. Diaz married a U.S. citizen, allowing her to reunite with her father and U.S.-born younger sister, who had stayed behind in Beaverton.

Her experience illustrates the price that U.S.-raised undocumented children can pay for their parents’ decision to bring them across the border.

On a chilly fall night, three outreach workers pull up behind a two-tone van parked on a quiet side street in Southeast Portland. After a polite knock, two women, a man and a friendly pit bull climb out onto the sidewalk and the survey begins.

The workers asked: Where do you go to the hospital when you’re sick? Have you ever been taken to the hospital against your will? Are you an IV drug user?

They log the responses, photograph the man and the women and hand out $5 gift cards from Burger King and Safeway.

Every five seconds, a face scrolled across the big screen in the packed auditorium of Santa Monica Library. Lots of blank stares and half-asleep expressions, and an occasional smile. Many heads were wrapped in scarves, hoods and blankets or covered with watch caps against the rainy night air.

One young man with a mustache was wearing a Dodgers’ cap. Another had on a red “Mississippi State” sweatshirt under a windbreaker.

An African American man in glasses made a V-sign with two fingers. An African American woman was waving a hand.

These are just a dozen of the nearly 3,000 men, women and children who died homeless on the streets of Los Angeles County from January 1, 2000, to May 28, 2007, and who are named in the report “Dying without Dignity.” Based on statistics from the county coroner’s office, the 44-page document released in December was compiled by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness in partnership with the National Coalition for the Homeless.

During those seven and one-half years, some 380 homeless human beings died annually — an average of at least one person every day.

Hartford has taken major steps in recent years to turn downtown into a thriving mix of residential, retail, dining, office and cultural uses. One gaping hole has been the absence of a grocery store to serve a growing number of downtown residents.

But that might change soon, after the encouraging news that a grocer could open for business by summer at 410 Asylum St. That is the historic building that was turned into 70 mixed-income apartments by New York-based Common Ground, the nonprofit that has won national recognition for its efforts to end homelessness.

New York policy pioneer Rosanne Haggerty believes Australia can eradicate chronic homelessness and that the solutions are less complicated than we may think.

The Common Ground model, developed by an American, Rosanne Haggerty, is based on the idea that providing permanent supported accommodation to homeless people is not only a more effective way of breaking the cycle of homelessness but also cheaper.

Research has found that the model can be delivered for as little as $US36 a night compared with $US54 for a shelter, $US164 for a prison cell or $US1185 for an emergency hospital bed.

Santa Monica Daily Press
March 14, 2009
by Melody Hanatani
WILSHIRE BLVD. — More than a year-and-a-half after a trio of dormant buildings on the West L.A. Veterans Affairs campus were designated to house homeless services, a nonprofit provider has been selected to operate one of the facilities.
New York-based nonprofit Common Ground and McCormack Baron Salazar, a national [...]

Project 50, initiated by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, had a bold objective: Select the 50 most hard-core, sick, chronically homeless people on skid row, give them a place to live with a raft of support services, and see what happens.

Would their lives be transformed? If so, how much would it cost taxpayers?

New York Times
Editorial
July 8, 2008
Louisiana is set to receive $73 million in desperately needed federal aid to help house some of the region’s lowest-income families, including ill and disabled people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
Landing the money is only the first challenge. Now begins the delicate and difficult work of setting up permanent housing arrangements [...]

The Age
May 22, 2008 - 9:11AM
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will address a national conference on homelessness in Adelaide on Thursday morning.
Mr Rudd has singled out the issue of homelessness for special attention by his government, and has ordered a white paper into ways to solve the problem.
The executive director of the welfare group Brotherhood of [...]

With its storefront tributes to Southern California’s surfing culture and L.A.’s hipster elite, the leafy dinosaur topiary and gleaming signs that promise multiple movies, Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade is a popular destination for tens of thousands each week.

In the middle of the night, it is a destination of another sort for a smattering of the city’s chronically homeless. It is those inhabitants whom social workers hoped to encounter early Monday.

One man, wrapped in an orange scarf and dingy blankets, slept near the entrance to Barney’s Beanery. A nearby walker was draped with his only personal belongings, protected from the almost constant drizzle.

Starting small on skid row might just work.
December 26, 2007
From:Los Angeles Times, Opinion
Earlier this month, about two dozen Los Angeles County workers spent several nights walking skid row at 4 a.m., waking people who slept on the streets to ask them who they were and how they were doing. The answers helped create a registry [...]

Sunday, 30 March, 2008
World News Australia
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s wife Therese Rein eases her way into the role of ‘first lady’. (AAP)
Therese Rein says she is still coming to terms with the scrutiny of being Australia’s “first lady” as she made her debut solo public engagement in New York
Making transitions can be difficult - It [...]

March 31, 2008
The Australian
MAKING transitions can be difficult. It doesn’t matter if you’re a person living on the streets who has finally found a home, or a successful businesswoman suddenly thrust into the limelight as the wife of the prime minister.
Therese Rein confessed she was still coming to terms with the scrutiny of being Australia’s [...]

Therese Rein meets with Common Ground staff at the Times Square
Common Ground welcomed Therese Rein, wife of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, to the Times Square– the nation’s largest permanent supportive housing residence — on Saturday, March 29. Ms. Rein met with our Board Chair Peter Ezersky and members of our staff to [...]

L.A. County’s Jennifer Campos interviews a homeless person living on Skid Row.
The Common Ground Institute helped Los Angeles County, Santa Monica, and New Orleans identify homeless individuals at highest risk of dying and then prioritize them into housing.
“When communities understand that homelessness is a critical public health issue, their leaders take decisive action,” says Becky [...]

Quilt made by local artisans for returning troops moving into Common Ground’s first residence for homeless veterans, says “Thanks for your sacrifice”.
Next month, 48 veterans will start to move into Common Ground’s first residence for homeless veterans – and our first facility in Westchester County. We will provide returning soldiers with supportive services to help [...]

Listen to last week’s BBC Radio 4 broadcast, highlighting Common Ground with an interview of our President Rosanne Haggerty and some of our residents. Click here to listen the show, which requires RealPlayer.
Next, WNYC’s Leonard Lopate discusses well-designed affordable housing, and speaks with Lori Girvan, Director of the Common Ground Institute.

Click here to listen to NPR’s Day to Day show from December 19th featuring Common Ground.

From: The Adelaide Advertiser; by JILL PENGELLEY;November 17, 2007
HOMELESS people will move into apartments above Adelaide’s new bus station by Christmas.
Premier Mike Rann yesterday toured the Franklin St Common Ground project, which includes 38 studio and one-bedroom apartments.
The $6 million development is a joint effort of Government and business, with companies including Ikea and Designer [...]

By MATTHEW L. BROWN
The Willimantic Chronicle
WILLIMANTIC - A number of people whose prospects were limited a mere four days ago are, today, ready to partake in the American dream known as gainful employment.
More than 20 people from the Willimantic area, including several living in the Windham House (formerly Hotel Hooker), graduated Thursday afternoon from an [...]

New Orleans encouraged to rehab old buildings
By Philip Rucker
Staff Writer
New Orleans Times Picayune
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin prepares to appoint a blue ribbon panel to map out a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness in the city, officials say New York’s “mixed-use” housing approach that has drawn praise to the Big Apple may be [...]

Yes to Common Ground
Caitlynne Palmieri, Hartford
The Hartford Courant
The June 4 article in the Connecticut section titled “No!’ To Supportive Housing” makes me so angry I cant even see straight. The photograph of people holding signs to keep public housing off of Main Street in Willimantic harks back to the tune after Brown vs. Board of [...]

Outcry At Hotel Hooker
John Craggs, Marlborough
The Hartford Courant
Regarding the June, 4 article “No’ To Supportive Housing” [Connecticut section, June 4]:
Interesting. An awful lot of people are up in arms over Willimantic’s former Hotel Hooker being run by Common Ground. Where were these people during the hotel’s former life as a drug and prostitution center?

TRACY GORDON FOX
Courant Staff Writer
The Hartford Courant
WILLIMANTIC — A press conference to announce that the former Hotel Hooker will be managed by Common Ground was overshadowed by protesters who came armed with signs and slogans to protest supportive housing on Main Street.
“Why would you put 100 units of public housing on our Main Street?” asked [...]

TRACY GORDON FOX
Courant Staff Writer
The Hartford Courant
WILLIMANTIC — The Seth Chauncey Hotel, formerly known as the Hotel Hooker, has been turned over to the management of Common Ground, a New York-based organization known for its work with supportive housing and its efforts to establish similar housing in Hartford.
Superior Court Judge Francis J. Foley on Wednesday [...]

Peter Leeds
The Willimantic Chronicle
Editor:
I just wanted to drop the Chronicle a brief note to express an opposing viewpoint. In this community of Windham and Willimantic live many fair-minded, good-hearted, humane citizens who do not in fact oppose Common Ground, on Main Street or anywhere lese for that matter.
We are not so strident, not so [...]

Joyce C. McKelvey,
Windham
The Willimantic Chronicle
Editor:
As mental health workers in the Willimantic area, we write to support the plan being considered to develop the Nathan Hale and Seth Chauncey (Hooker) hotels into 100 affordable efficiency rental units for single individuals with special needs and for employed persons whose income remains inadequate. This plan for supportive housing [...]

CHRISTINA HALL
The Willimantic Chronicle
WILLIMANTIC- Despite running a supportive-housing apartment complex with 652 tenants in Times Square since 1994, Common Ground is still known by neighbors as the “ice cream people.”
And ice cream, specifically Ben & Jerry’s, was on the minds of some locals who attended a community meeting Wednesday night to learn more about the [...]

Willimantic Chronicle
WILLIMANTIC - Representatives from common Ground will be making their formal introduction to the community at a meeting next week at Windham Middle School.
“I’m really hoping for a huge turnout,” said Alana Smith Trani, Common Ground’s project manager for the redevelopment of the Seth Chauncey Hotel (a.k.a. Hotel Hooker) and the Nathan Hale into [...]

Willimantic Chronicle
NEW YORK - In the heart of Manhattan amid the bustle of the city it’s easy to miss the Time Square Hotel.
With only a small brass sign reading “The Times Square,” countless tourists and theater goers probably never notice the 652-room supportive-housing complex managed by Common Ground Community.
Plans for Common Ground’s takeover of the [...]

GAIL BRACCIDIFERRO
The New York Times, CONNECTICUT WEEKLY DESK
ALBERT W. BLEAU JR. was in Maine one weekend in January when he received a call notifying him that the boiler had broken at the residence hotel in Willimantic he had been managing for a month.
Instead of returning to Connecticut, Mr. Bleau called a tenant who had worked [...]

Bendix Anderson
Affordable Housing Finance
Newburgh, N.Y - To help lead a revival in this old Hudson River town, Tricia Haggerty is working to restore the historic Ritz Theater as a part of her mixed-use supportive housing project here.
Haggerty is the executive director of Safe Harbors of the Hudson. This summer, she will begin the rehabilitation [...]

Tom Condon
Hartford Courant
I was chatting with one of the security people at the Times Square Hotel on Tuesday, and he said people were always coming in thinking it was a regular hotel, a grand one at that, or a luxury apartment building.
Indeed, that’s what it appears to be. But it is actually supportive housing, the [...]

Michelle M. Murphy
The New York Times
For the last 13 years, Rosanne Haggerty has been transforming ramshackle, historic buildings in New York City into genteel, safe and affordable housing for people on the fringes of society.
Her nonprofit organization, common Ground Community, has been featured on “60 Minutes” and honored by the John D. and Catherine T. [...]

A new generation of cubicles goes up on the Bowery.
Elana Berkowitz
NEW YORK PRESS
Seventy-eight men fill the cubicles of the Andrews Hotel at 197 Bowery, one of the last flophouses on the block. Home is a four-by-six-foot room, just large enough for a narrow bed and locker, lit by a bare bulb. The walls rise only [...]

Christina Hall - Chronicle Staff Writer
Willimantic Chronicle
WILLIMANTIC — The buzzing of machinery in Windham Regional Vocational-Technical School’s carpentry shop was nonstop last week.
That’s because students worked constantly on the CNC router table to meet a big deadline last Friday.
The project entails using the CNC, or computerized numeric control, router to cut out various pieces of [...]

Christina Hall - Chronicle Staff Writer
The Willimantic Chronicle
WILLIMANTIC — A New York-based housing developer definitely has an interest in acquiring the Hotel Hooker.
First Selectman Michael Paulhus confirmed Thursday that Common Ground Community, which has transformed historic properties in Manhattan into supportive housing, has maintained an interest in Willimantic since it first visited in April.
“I still [...]

ROSANNE HAGGERTY
Hartford Courant
Common Ground recently received a remarkable gift from the Hollander Charitable Trust: the deed to 410 Asylum St. and the opportunity to transform this long-neglected property into a building that will contribute to the revitalization of downtown Hartford.
Successful communities are composed of a diversity of building types, uses and people. Common Ground has [...]

Reporter: Jill Colgan
ABC News Australia
Transcript
COLGAN: Steeped in southern charm and old money, this is New Orleans, Louisiana. But this is the wealthy side of town, just a short ride away from poverty-stricken, crumbling New Orleans. A city polarised by the haves and have nots.
REVEREND TOBEY PITMAN: We turn people away every night. I mean once [...]

Deborah Samuelson
The Clinton Chronicle
New York is not the only city with an affordable housing problem. But it is the one place where you’ll more than likely find a solution to it. Say hello to Common Ground.
Twelve years ago Common Ground was founded to preserve and transform the bankrupt and decrepit Times Square Hotel a once-gracious [...]

Adapt old buildings to fill gaps, she says
Lynne Jensen
Staff writer
The Times-Picayune
When it comes to finding a solution to urban homelessness, the task is the same whatever a city’s size, a homelessness expert from New York said Wednesday after touring shelters in downtown New Orleans and talking with city officials and business, community and religious leaders.
The [...]

Dominic Casciani
BBC News Online community affairs reporter
BBC News

Should we be rethinking how we live in cities? Pink Floyd’s guitarist, a radical New York apartment block and a London experiment aims to rebuild lives, rejuvenate buildings - and recreate communities.
London knows a thing or two about housing crises - and we’re not talking about the price [...]

AP
Toronto Star
Veteran Pink Floyd rocker David Gilmour sold his large London house to fund an $8 million (Cdn) contribution to a housing project for the homeless.
“David Gilmour’s generosity has provided a real launch pad for this project, and we are immensely grateful for the belief he’s shown,” Shaks Ghosh, chief executive of the charity Crisis [...]

Ananova

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour is donating millions to a housing project for homeless people and public sector workers in London.
Gilmour has already pledged £3.6 million to the project, which is modelled on a community centre already established in New York.
He is joining the chief executive of Crisis - the charity for homeless people - [...]

Deborah Samuelson
Director of Communications
webmail2005@commonground.org
Tel: 212.471.0885
Fax: 212.471.0825
New department to be formed to offer replication assistance

Deutsche Bank of Americas Foundation commits $100,000 for Ballroom renovations

Richard T. Roberts keynote speaker

New York, January 17, 2002 — At Common Ground Community’s 2001 Annual Meeting today, executive director Rosanne Haggerty announced the creation of a new Replication Assistance Unit.
Replication
In recent [...]