Their "supported housing" program emphasizes the promotion of a person's abilities not disabilities, community integration and flexible support services. Community Access provides 430 housing units in Manhattan & Brooklyn with plans for its first Bronx housing development in 2003. In addition to housing, Community Access also provides employment and training services.

For 28 years, Community Access has remained true to its vision: to provide quality housing and flexible services to those people most in need Community Access provides not just housing, but a home. For people coming out of homeless shelters or institutions, the staff at Community Access provide the "friends and family" that many have not enjoyed for a long time.
 

There are two basic types of housing:
Transitional Housing: focuses on providing intensive rehabilitative services. This program helps people with disabilities move from shelters and hospitals into the community.
 

An emphasis is placed on self-help - learning to support and be supported by peers. This is especially important for people struggling to overcome problems of substance abuse and symptoms of mental illness.
 

Treatment Apartment Program (TAP):  focus is to assist people who seek to return to a full-time schedule of daily activities.

Residents usually participate in job training, volunteer work, part-time work, education classes and ongoing mental health services.

Training Services
Peer Specialist Training Program: based on the belief that self-help is the most effective method for people who seek to recover from mental illness. The Peer Center is run entirely by professionals who have personal experience as consumers of the mental health system.
 

The Peer Center provides education, ongoing support and career planning and placement services to people with psychiatric disabilities who seek employment in the human services field. At the end of classroom training, each trainee is placed into a 3-6 month internship at a human service agency. When the internships are completed, the Center assists in their search of a permanent Peer Specialist position.
 

The Center has recently initiated a program to help people with psychiatric disabilities who have been released from the prison system. This program helps to deal positively with the discrimination that commonly hinders their re-integration into the community.
 

Access Employment & Training Center: offers consumers extensive career and educational opportunities. GED classes, college prep, computer, mentoring, job caching and placing are among the opportunities offered. Another focus of ETC is to provide consumers with an opportunity to acquire the social and vocational skills needed for long-term independent living success.

Every year approximately 30,000 people with psychiatric disabilities cycle through the City jails, and about 3,500 individuals with serious and persistent mental illness reside on Riker’s Island on any given day.  The mental health care system has become a revolving door of hospitals and prisons. Thousands of mentally ill individuals who are willing and even eager to seek treatment are turned away, placed on waiting lists or treated for short periods and prematurely discharged.  Due to a lack of community reinvestment and poor planning, many of these individuals cycle in and out of jails and hospitals with little or no access to mental health services.  Unbelievably, some of these individuals are provided with only a $3 Metrocard and a two-day supply of medication.

These individuals are at a great risk and are dependent on the right balance of public assistance, caregivers, medication and case management for survival.   If we are truly to help the mentally ill and move them into self-sufficiency, we must expand community-based facilities, outpatient programs, and provide supportive housing.  This can only be achieved by determining and addressing the client’s complex individual needs, including the need for substance abuse and psychiatric treatment. In most cases, the first step towards achieving self-sufficiency will be addressing the issue of the lack of affordable housing.

The market rate for housing in New York City is often out of reach for people on a fixed income and for people who are re-entering the workforce following a period of disability, especially those suffering from psychiatric disabilities.   It is critically important for persons suffering from psychiatric disabilities to be able to obtain the most appropriate and adequate housing. 

 Community Access and other supportive housing programs have proven to be extremely effective in increasing access to housing and related services for people with mental illness.  When you compare how much it costs to house someone in supportive housing, it is clear that supportive housing is the most cost-effective solution.  The annual cost for a psychiatric hospital is $360,000 per person, prison is $60,000, municipal shelter is $23,000, and supportive housing is $12,000 per person.

 Yet, we still don’t have enough supportive housing to meet the needs of people, especially families, with psychiatric disabilities.  In fact, there are only a handful of supportive housing units for families in the city, and this shortage continues to prevent parents with psychological disabilities from getting their children out of foster care.

After housing, the next task would be obtaining stable and appropriate employment. It is critical for persons with disabilities to be able to participate in community life as much as possible.  Employment is a measure of the individual’s recovery and reintegration into society. Unfortunately, although advances in treatment and rehabilitation have allowed some mentally ill individuals to work, the unemployment rate for the mentally ill remains three to five times higher than the rest of the population.  To encourage true independence, vocational rehabilitation programs for the mentally ill must be expanded in order to provide transitional employment opportunities and develop innovative employment programs.