STREET WORK

Most of our work in providing people with the tools, information, and resources they need to avoid HIV takes place in our storefront drop-in center at 39 Avenue C. But not all of it. Seven times each week, staff and volunteers head out onto the streets of the Lower East Side to do outreach and education. In the past, the Lower East Side was home to large encampments of homeless people and open-air drug markets. This made street outreach easier. Now, homelessness and drug use has been largely made invisible. It's still goes on, but it is harder to find.

On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, we do street based syringe exchange using roving outreach teams. Many people prefer to meet us outside of our storefront, because they fear that if their family or neighbors saw them coming out of our storefront, there would be questions they wouldn't want to answer. If people can't come to us, we're happy to come to them. Additionally, our roving teams bring assistance to people who live in the parts of the Lower East Side below Houston Street. A group of low-come diabetics who live in public housing have used our street-based services for many years.

Three times a week, we do street outreach targeting sex workers. Many of the women who exchange sex for money on the Lower East Side are drug users. We use the term "sex worker," as opposed to "prostitute," because of the terrific dis-empowerment these women face because of their desperation. Many prostitutes work with highly organized businesses. They can determine when they will work and under what conditions, and often can refuse to do business with a customer. The women we work with often are out on the corner alone, and will get into any car or go with any customer who approaches them. They can't afford to say no. These circumstances put them at much higher risk of HIV, and we accordingly focus our efforts on this group. Recently, we started a drop-in for women who do sex work on Saturday nights, from 8 p.m. to Midnight. Women can come in, wash up, get something to eat, and stock up on condoms and syringes before they begin the stroll. This contact enables us to provide services to people when and where they are most desperately needed.

In addition, we frequently send outreach teams with condoms, bleach kits, and literature out to the parks, street corners, public housing developments, and other areas of the Lower East Side. Outreach workers and volunteers collect syringes as they go, and work to educate the community-at-large about the services that we provide. These efforts have significantly improved our relations with area policy makers and neighborhood stakeholders. Our local Community Planning Board recently rescinded a position they had taken in opposition to our existence, and cited our community outreach work among their reasons for doing so.