VOCAL Accomplishments

VOCAL’s community organizing has won significant victories for marginalized

New Yorkers during the past decade, and trained over 1,000 low-income people
who are living with HIV/AIDS, drug users and formerly incarcerated in
community organizing and advocacy skills.

 2010: Won a new law expanding access to syringes to prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis
C and requiring education for law enforcement. The law amended the New York State Penal
Code to clarify that possessing new and used syringes obtained through public health programs
does not violate paraphernalia or controlled substances laws. While syringe possession has been
legal under the Public Health Law for nearly two decades, police continued to harass and arrest
people for syringe possession because the Penal Code was never changed.
 2010: Ended prison-based gerrymandering in New York, which undermined the principle of
one person, one vote, in coalition with Citizen Action, the Prison Policy Project and others.
Until now, over 60,000 people in incarcerated in New York prisons have been counted where they
are incarcerated instead of their home communities for the purpose of legislative redistricting, even
though they have no voting rights and nearly all will eventually return home. This had the effect of
inflating the voting power of small towns with prisons while diminishing the voting power of
communities with high levels of incarceration.
 2009: Restored nearly $4 million for supportive housing programs serving low-income people
living with HIV/AIDS with substance use and mental health issues. Working with City
Council, we defeated Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to eliminate about half of the supportive
services staff in housing programs that serve the most vulnerable New Yorkers living with
HIV/AIDS. If the budget cut would have been approved, homelessness among people living with
HIV/AIDS would have increased and medical care would have decreased.
 2008: Pushed the NYC Department of Homeless Services (DHS) to adopt a policy to address
drug overdoses and injection drug use among residents in public shelters. The policy requires
both workers and residents to be trained on responding to drug overdoses and permits residents to
safely store syringes. The two leading causes of death in the single adult shelter system are drug
overdoses and HIV/AIDS.
 2007: Prevented an illegal rent increase for over 4,000 formerly homeless people living with
HIV/AIDS who reside in supportive housing. A proposal in 2006 by then-Governor Pataki
would have doubled the rent contributions for clients in HASA supportive housing programs,
which would have led to widespread arrears and housing loss among tenants living on federal
disability income and Veteran's benefits.
 2006: Advocated for passage of the Safe Housing Act, which provided a mechanism for
tenants to seek immediate repairs in their homes when they were living in dangerous housing
and landlords were unresponsive, in coalition with Make the Road NY, Housing Here &
Now, NY Immigration Coalition and others. The bill became a Local Law in 2007.
 2005: Won a series of laws improving access to the welfare system, monitoring shelter
conditions, and guaranteeing permanent, medically appropriate housing for low-income
people living with HIV/AIDS. Following our successful HASA (HIV/AIDS Services
Administration) Human Rights Watch campaign, NYCAHN launched the House Every One!
campaign to advocate for the right to permanent housing for people living with AIDS. This
campaign led to City Council passing and Mayor Bloomberg signing into law three measures that
(718) 802-9540 | info@vocal-ny.org | www.VOCAL-NY.org | 80-A Fourth Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11217
 ensured homeless people living with HIV/AIDS are moved from emergency shelter into medically
appropriate permanent housing on a timely basis (Local Law 50 of 2005 / Int 0535-2005),
improved processing of housing and other welfare benefits and increase transparency (Local 32 of
2005 / Intro 0541-2005), and required creation of a central housing referral system and monitoring
of shelter conditions (Local Law 51 of 2005 / Intro 0543-2005). Local laws can be viewed online
through the City Council website at http://legistar.council.nyc.gov.
 2004: Convened the Still We Rise Coalition to raise the visibility of issues affecting low-
income New Yorkers during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in NYC. This multi-
issue coalition brought issues that directly affected the lives of poor New Yorkers into the forefront
of media attention during the RNC. Moreover, the relationships formed through this coalition
created a foundation for future collaboration and ensured HIV/AIDS was included in broader social
justice efforts in NYC.
 2003: Exposed the City’s use of illegal halfway houses for parolees living with HIV/AIDS.
Advocacy by our Parolee Human Rights Project led to an award winning NPR story and an FBI
investigation into one of the most corrupt landlords, which forced the City to stop using this illegal
housing.
 2001-2002: Strengthened the right to same-day and medically appropriate emergency
housing for low-income New Yorkers living with AIDS. Through our Welfare Human Rights
Watch project, NYCAHN members documented the City's failure to offer same-day emergency
housing that was medically appropriate for people with compromised immune systems. A series of
court decisions in 2001 and 2002 order the City to immediately house homeless people with
HIV/AIDS who had been denied emergency housing and ensure conditions met basic standards.
 2001: Advocated for the introduction of State legislation that would authorize Department of
Health oversight of correctional healthcare services. Members of NYCAHN’s Parolee Human
Rights Project early on identified the deplorable health services inside prisons and jails as a vital
issue to address. New York has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS who are
incarcerated in the nation, and rates of hepatitis C and other health issues are equally high.
 2000: Helped win dramatic reforms to the NYC Continuum of Care Coalition, which
allocates federal homeless assistance funding through the McKinney-Vento program.
Through the leadership of NYCAHN co-founder Jose Capestany, the previously closed coalition
expanded seats for homeless people and more front-line service providers to have meaningful
participation in decision-making. NYCAHN also published a series of interviews collected from
homeless people living with HIV/AIDS part of our Oral History Project.
 1999 – 2000: Participated in campaign that led to passage of the Expanded Syringe Access
Program (ESAP) that allowed pharmacies and community-based organizations to make
syringes available without a prescription to prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C.
NYCAHN members worked with the Legal Action Center and others to promote the new law and
develop community education materials.
 1997: Organizational members worked to create a comprehensive local law codifying the
City’s Division of AIDS Services, the right to medically appropriate emergency housing (not
shelter) and a comprehensive list of rights. This remains one of the most progressive pieces of
welfare rights legislation anywhere in the country.