Community Access

Why Donate to Community Access?

The past year and a half has tested Community Access. Now, we’re stronger than before.

We provide supportive housing and social services to people living with mental health concerns in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn – in neighborhoods hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The people we serve were especially vulnerable to severe impact from the disease: many seniors, and individuals living with multiple underlying health conditions. And the disparate impact of COVID on communities of color painfully exposed the human cost of racial disparities in the health care system.

While Community Access has always stood for human rights, the vital task of centering racial equity in our work – work that is largely necessary because of the effects of structural racism – has never been clearer. In the non-profit community we have much work to do, to become better racial justice allies and actors.

Throughout 2020, even as life as we knew it transformed, our work continued. In fact, for the 3,500 tenants and participants who rely on our services, our support became more important than ever.

We came together to meet this challenge. While we lost some beloved members of our community, thanks to the heroic efforts of our essential workers we prevailed, for now, slowing the spread of the virus.

For all the New Yorkers who count on us, we found new, creative ways to deliver our critical services. We became public health ambassadors.

Dedicated staff delivered food, medicine, and other supplies to home-bound tenants throughout New York. These frontline workers also performed daily health and wellness check-ins with tenants, making sure they had what they needed to stay safe and to navigate myriad challenges.

Mobile teams delivered meals and care packages to New Yorkers on the streets and in shelters.

We purchased and distributed thousands of masks and other personal protective equipment. And when we called on the wider community for support, we received thousands of homemade masks from people around the country. We even sewed some masks of our own.

Programs developed strategies for providing tele-health services — and we covered the cost of new phones and phone plans for hundreds of tenants and participants to make this possible.

And in the middle of everything, we opened a brand new 215-unit building on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx, which is right now providing homes for individuals and families leaving the shelter system.

How did we do this? By sticking together and working together.

Even while more physically distanced than usual, we find ways to stay connected. To support one another. To spread a little kindness and compassion.

And that’s why, when this is all over, we’ll still be right where we belong: on the frontlines of building a stronger, more just New York.