For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat... I was a stranger and you invited Me in... I was sick and you looked after Me... Matthew 25:35-36
The Goal of Edwin's Place
The goal of Edwin's Place is to meet the immediate and long term needs of single adults, elderly couples, and families living with HIV/AIDS. Additionally, Edwin's Place seeks to facilitate independence, dignity and well-being through a complement of safe, affordable housing and day-to-day supportive services provided to tenants. All tenants MUST be capable of independent living and may not require 24 hour round-the-clock, on-site medical intervention.
 Edwin's Place will be an innovative and unique program. Innovative because services will be voluntary and available to all tenants, regardless of race, culture, religion, ethnic background or sexual orientation. Unique because the residence will be the first in Brooklyn’s East New York community, if not the first in New York City as a whole, that addresses single adults, elderly couples, as well as an infected adult head of household while addressing the immediate and long-term needs of that person's spouse and/or child(ren). Most permanent supportive residences for the elderly and for families living with HIV/AIDS are unable to successfully address the special needs of an aging population infected with the virus including addressing the special needs of an infected adult head of household while addressing the immediate and long-term needs of that person's spouse and/or child(ren). Seniors in these situations are often isolated and left to fend for themselves. Children in these situations are oftentimes separated from their parents and placed in foster care settings while their parents are often placed in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) facilities or worse, in unsafe hotels where there are no supportive services. With the development of Edwin's Place in the East New York community of Brooklyn, AAPCI seeks to change all that.
Edwin’s Place Mission Statement
- To provide access to safe, clean permanent supportive housing in a totally drug-free environment for single adults, elderly couples, families living with HIV/AIDS, with their dependent children; regardless of their race, socio-economic status, or sexual orientation;
- To ensure that each resident remains connected to treatment and obtains the best possible health outcomes;
- To provide quality HIV prevention and case management services in a nurturing environment;
- To empower our clients physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.
The Need for Supportive Housing
Twenty-eight plus years ago, it began as a ripple, one that would soon become a tidal wave. On June 5, 1981, an odd but troubling reference appeared in a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), describing a rare form of pneumonia afflicting five gay men. By year's end, their ailment would be known worldwide as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - or AIDS.
 For many people who lived in the 80s with the disease, AIDS was almost always a death sentence. We watched as many of our friends and neighbors, lovers and partners, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and our children die painful and horrible deaths. As we approach 30 years since the first diagnosis, the disease is different. Today in the U.S., more than 1.1 million people are living with HIV and/or AIDS – and more than 500,000 are Black Americans, far surpassing any other racial or ethnic group.
While AIDS remains a formidable foe and is the number one killer of people of color (84.5% of NYC's new HIV cases are among African-Americans, Latinos and Asian/Pacific Islanders) in the United States, advances in drug therapies have turned AIDS into a chronic, manageable disease although one without a cure and one where an early death remains a real prospect. Today, people look forward to living longer rather than counting down the days to the end of their lives. This is what Edwin's Place is all about -- a place of hope, a place to live with dignity.
Who
was Edwin?
View or add the name of your loved one to our AIDS Memorial Wall.
Where did the estimate that every 9½ minutes someone in the United States gets HIV come from?
In 2008, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) developed new estimates for the annual number of HIV infections—which suggest that about 56,300 new HIV infections occur each year. This estimate is a national average. CDC arrived at the 9½ minutes figure by dividing the number of minutes in one year by the 56,300 new HIV infections that were estimated for 2006. This result indicates that, on average, one new HIV infection occurs every 9.34 minutes in a year. For more information on the 56,300 estimate visit the HIV Incidence section of the CDC HIV Web site.
Neither Should You
If so, call the CDC National STD and AIDS Hotline, Toll free at:
1-800-CDC-INFO (1-800-232-4636);
TTY: 1-888-232-6348
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