Homeless Outreach to Help the Most Vulnerable New Yorkers Living on the Streets
If you see an unsheltered person in need of help, please contact 311 and ask for the homeless outreach team. We recommend the 311 app!
Goddard Riverside has been a pioneer in homeless services since the 1970s. We were among the first organizations to establish homeless outreach teams to seek out and help the most vulnerable New Yorkers living on the streets. Now Goddard Riverside continues to lead as part of the Manhattan Outreach Consortium (MOC), a multiagency effort responsible for outreach and housing throughout Manhattan.
Goddard Riverside established the MOC in 2007 to bring all city-funded street outreach work under one umbrella. The consortium includes the Center for Urban Community Services and Breaking Ground. Each agency handles outreach in its home community, where it has the deepest roots and strongest institutional knowledge.
The Manhattan Outreach Consortium provides homeless street outreach 365 days a year, including in the coldest and hottest seasons known as Code Blue and Code Red.
Goddard Riverside is responsible for evening, night, and weekend outreach for the entire borough of Manhattan. We dispatch teams to follow up on all Manhattan-bound calls and messages from the city’s 311 system, a major point of contact for New Yorkers who want to report someone on the street in need of help.
MOC teams are out around Manhattan 24/7. These trained specialists devote months and often years to developing trusting relationships with unsheltered people. The teams connect people in need of services such as medical and psychiatric care, food, and shelter while helping them transition into permanent housing—often into Goddard Riverside’s transitional and supportive housing facilities.
This model has proved highly effective. Since late 2007, the MOC has placed more than 3,100 formerly unsheltered adults in permanent housing.