Executive Director's Blog

The Interfaith Assembly addresses the crisis of homelessness and the shortage of affordable housing in two ways. Through our empowerment programs we help those who have been homeless to recover from the trauma associated with their homelessness, and with our advocacy partners we work to “Build the Blessed City Together” and promote public policies that will – produce affordable housing; prevent homelessness, provide important services; and promote income and employment.On both these fronts, there has been much recent activity.

In the area of empowerment, in late 2007 the Assembly received a generous grant in memory of Andrew Stallman which has enabled us to assist three community partners in replicating the very effective life-skills program that we helped to establish in 1989 with New York Catholic Charities. These include "Break Through", established by Mercy Haven, Inc. in Sayville on Long Island; "Rebuilding Towards Manhood" organized by the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica; and in partnership with Congregation Ansche Chesed and other upper west side congregations, the first Synagogue based program entitled Face to Face" ("Panim al Panim"). The Assembly also assisted St. Francis Xavier Church to re-activate its own Education-Outreach Program in downtown Manhattan.We are currently exploring the development of a number of other life-skills program sites as well as working with Fordham University in developing a project to document the long term effectiveness of this program model.