Addiction treatment is how Project Renewal began and it has been a core focus of ours for almost forty years. Back in 1967, we started up a tiny, highly ambitious program for the men known as "Bowery bums" - alcoholics who lived in the dozens of flophouses in the lower east side of Manhattan. (We were then known as the Manhattan Bowery Project and later Manhattan Bowery Corporation). That initial project was the earliest of many 'firsts': it set out to prove people could 'detox' - endure the often dangerous symptoms of withdrawal from alcohol - without going into the hospital.

And it worked.

This first success led to other 'firsts': helping to establish a national agency for alcohol addiction, helping to decriminalize alcoholism; establishing the city's first residential treatment program for alcoholics; and setting up the nation's first NON-medical detox unit for alcoholics.

Today, our range of programs serves people with every type of addiction: alcoholics, drug addicts and former heroin addicts on methadone maintenance. As with all our programs, we seek to take people where they ARE and help them move forward.

How do you help men and women who have been homeless for 2 or more years and are turned away from traditional programs because they can't get sober for the required 3-6 months before admission? You try a new approach. If the traditional continuum of treatment- with housing as the final step- shuts out some men and women who have been homeless the longest, then a "housing first" model might be their only hope.

In 2003, Project Renewal proposed to take 40 homeless adults who were turned away from other programs and place them in their own apartments immediately. A multidisciplinary team would bring services directly to men and women to guide them in recovery.

The team included social workers, peer counselors, a psychiatric nurse and physician, and a housing manager. They offered support, counseling, medical care, help with the activitites of daily living, entitlements, and employment services. Over the past four years, the team built strong and trusting relationships with their clients, made them feel better physically, and helped them create a new life.

We are proud that 86% of our In Homes Now clients have stayed housed over the past four years. Drinking and drug use lessened, physical and mental health improved. In short, they got better. How do these results compare with the results of traditional, or "housing second" models? Just the same, according to Dr. Robert Rosenheck, an epidemiologist from Yale University, who evaluated our clients at three-month intervals. He confirmed what we suspected: a housing first model can work as well as our other programs in improving the lives of homeless adults - and it means giving homes to those who otherwise might never make it. For those who are shut out of other programs, In Homes Now may be their only hope for leaving the streets behind.

Painting by a former 3rd Street resident

finding employment.

Often, for people in the throes of active addiction, that next step is detox, so Project Renewal created a 32-bed chemical dependency Crisis Center. There, medically-trained personnel help clients through the physically and emotionally challenging process of withdrawal.

This transitional housing program for 24 men in recovery from substance abuse offers couseling and job training. The clients acquire employment skills through working with the Times Square Business Improvement District. At the same time, residents are enrolled in our licensed outpatient treatment program. The combination of treatment, support, life skills and work speaks for itself: 95% of Renewal House graduates become fully employed; 99% become permanently housed.

Renewal Farm was located at Camp LaGuardia in Chester and had to close when the city shelter closed. Serving 24 men Renewal Farm combined counseling, job training, job placement and assistance in finding housing with work on the seven-acre organic farm. There they grew unusual greens, herbs, and flowers for sale in several greenmarkets in New York City.

See what Lenore Skenazy of the Daily News wrote about the Farm.

See what the Chronicle wrote about Renewal Farm.

Painting by a former 3rd Street resident

In 2001, we converted the 100-bed Kenton Hall residence, just around the corner from Third Street, into the city's first program shelter for homeless men on methadone maintenance. The Kenton had been one of the Bowery's most notorious flophouses before we took it over in 1994 and it became the three-month re-entry program for graduates of Renewal on the Bowery. But in 2001, before the conversion, an estimated 1500 homeless people on methadone maintenance languished in shelters, unable to access treatment programs that required participants to be drug free. Like Project Renewal's other treatment programs, clients at Kenton Hall receive comprehensive health, support , housing and employment services so that they may live successfully in the community.

Back to top