Thank you so much for your interest in our organization's innovative approach to ending homelessness. I'd love to hear about what particular interests you have, and I'm happy to provide you with a little more information on us.
Our nonprofit, Community Solutions, which was founded in 2011, helps communities solve the complex problems facing their most vulnerable, hard hit members. A large part of our work addresses homelessness in direct or upstream ways.
Homelessness in America is a public health emergency. The mortality rate for street homelessness is on par with some forms of cutting a person's lifespan by as much as 25 years.
Our 100,000 Homes Campaign is a direct approach to ending homelessness. It's a national movement of over 230 communities across the nation that are working together to house 100,000 vulnerable and chronically homeless individuals and families by July 2014. The Campaign works with these communities to identify all of their homeless neighbors by name, track and measure their local housing placement progress, and adopt process improvements and evidence based-practices to improve their ability to house homeless people more quickly.
To date, 100,000 Homes communities have housed more than 78,400 individuals and families!
As for our upstream approaches, we work in Northeast Hartford, CT and Brownsville, Brooklyn, NY to address many factors that can lead to homelessness and we work to prevent that from happening.
In Brownsville, Brooklyn, our Brownsville Partnership works in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the country, which struggles with a high crime rate, low employment and poor health indicators. With our network of 27 local partners, we are concentrating existing resources and support around the vulnerable, hard-hit residents in Brownsville, while strengthening ties between this isolated neighborhood and the rest of the city so we can expand opportunities for all residents.
We have prevented evictions, addressed mental health concerns, and worked to connect residents in Brownsville public housing to better primary health care and employment. This year. we are going to intensely focus on connecting residents to jobs, which will provide a foundation for economic revival in the neighborhood.
In Northeast Hartford, where residents struggle with crime, lack of employment and extremely poor health indicators, we work with our network of partners to turn the neighborhood around.
The neighborhood is the poorest area in one of America's poorest cities, despite Connecticut's place among the nation's wealthiest states. It is also among the least healthy. We aim to reduce unnecessary hospital utilization among residents by improving access to primary care and social supports among the neighborhood's least healthy residents. We have launched a neighborhood-based care coordination effort that focuses on the most frequent users of hospital services. And this year, we will hire and train local residents as community health workers.
When we reach the top 1 percent of frequent hospital users in the area, this is likely to save taxpayers nearly $10 million annually and improve the health and well being of these individuals, while creating good jobs for local residents.
