Housing Works moves New York headquarters

Housing Works, the New York City-based housing and AIDS advocacy group, this week announced plans to move its headquarters from Manhattan to Brooklyn, a neighborhood the agency calls the "epicenter" of New York's AIDS pandemic, the New York Post reports. "AIDS has become an epidemic of poverty, racial disparity, and lack of access to health care. In Brooklyn, all these aspects of the epidemic have come together in a deadly way," Michael Kink, counsel for Housing Works, told the Post. Health department statistics show that the majority of HIV and AIDS cases in New York City are among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians. About half of the city's HIV and AIDS cases are among people born in the Caribbean, according to officials at the Caribbean Women's Health Association. About 22,000 HIV-positive people live in Brooklyn, according to city health officials. The city borough also reported 379 AIDS-related deaths from January to September 2003. Housing Works offers several AIDS-related programs aside from housing assistance for HIV-positive people and their families, including social services, health care, job training, and assistance with applications for other city services.