Blog
Celebrating 2017 at CUCS!
January 11, 2018

2017 was a big year for CUCS! We reached some exciting milestones and continued to help New Yorkers build brighter futures.

We started off the year moving our women’s transitional housing program from Lower Manhattan to the Prospect Place community. The program expanded to 90 beds, and became part of a new neighborhood full of exciting amenities, including the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and Prospect Park. Since the move, Prospect Place continues to be a program where women feel secure and supported!

We celebrated one year at our newest supportive housing residence, The Sydelle! Located in the Bronx, The Sydelle is home to formerly homeless and low-income individuals and families. To mark the milestone, we spent time with some of the members of The Sydelle community to learn how their new homes are helping them build brighter futures for themselves and their families.

In honor of our big birthday, we launched a peer-to-peer fundraising hub in July! The hub allows people to support our cause by tapping into their networks to fundraise on behalf of their own talents or special milestones. Thanks to our incredible fundraisers, our birthday campaign surpassed its goal of $50,000 and we are looking forward to watching our peer to peer efforts grow to reach the new goal of $75,000!

In the summer, we announced our role as the lead organization in the campaign to reduce street homelessness in Manhattan. We now oversee all outreach and housing placement services for men and women living on the streets of Manhattan. Our dedicated street outreach teams work 24/7, 365 days a year to help people move out of homelessness and into housing.

We continued to train people how to use the life-saving opioid overdose antidote, naloxone. Our Opioid Overdose Prevention Program (OOPP) is dedicated to educating and training staff, clients and community members on opioid overdose reversal. To date, the OOPP has distributed 1,200 naloxone kits, trained more than 1,000 people and saved 27 lives.

The holidays were a particularly exciting time! For Giving Tuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back, we were featured on MSNBC with Ali Velshi to discuss the work we do helping people on the streets of Manhattan. We also held Rock to Rise, a special benefit concert at The Cutting Room in Midtown Manhattan which brought together an all-star lineup and over 350 guests to celebrate CUCS!

In 2018, we look forward to growing and accomplishing much more! Stay up to date on all CUCS news and announcements by signing up for our monthly newsletter. We have some exciting developments planned for the New Year you will not want to miss!