Sometimes everything falls into place.  Without the emergency housing support that AIDS Project New Haven (APNH) received from Neighbor-to-Neighbor Lifeline Anna* would be homeless.  For years Anna struggled with substance abuse that had at times put her at risk of becoming homeless.  Anna worked closely with her case manager and substance abuse counselor at APNH and recently shared that she when she attempted to pay her rent with a money order she discovered she was more seriously in arrears than she thought.  Her providers were concerned – had she relapsed?  She hadn’t.  It turned out there was another reason that Anna had trouble understanding her rental situation and keeping track of her payments.  After a sheriff knocked on her door and served her with an eviction notice Anna called her case manager.  Her case manager asked her to read what it said on the notice.  Anna revealed, for the first time, that she couldn’t do that because she could not read.  Anna, a woman well into her fifties, had learned to cover this fact up but this time she couldn’t.  Along with the eviction notice she brought other paperwork into APNH for her case manager to review – important paperwork that had been sitting unread in her apartment for months.  Without the support of the United Way of Greater New Haven and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven there would not have been a good resolution to Anna’s situation.  The case manager utilized Neighbor-to-Neighbor Lifeline emergency housing funding to prevent the eviction process.  Without this funding, and the opportunity it provided to identify her other needs, a very fragile woman would be homeless and without resources to maintain her continued health or sobriety. 
 
*Fictitious name to protect Identity