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The handsome beaux arts fa‡ade of Prince George Hotel in midtown Manhattan leads to a spacious lobby, with a piano and a few well-upholstered chairs. It is modelled on an English hunting lodge: oak-clad walls, an elaborate ceiling supported by large oak columns topped with gold leaf, and an ornate floor-to-ceiling fireplace.

It sounds like a haven for middle-income tourists. But the Prince George - and the Times Square hotel nearby with its white marble lobby and staircase - are owned by Common Ground, a not-for-profit charity.

It works with the city's homeless and low-income groups to provide permanent, rented accommodation, with job counselling and health and social services on site. Common Ground is now the US's biggest provider of supported accommodation, managing 1,600 units and with another 600 under development.

The Prince George was last used as a hotel in 1904, and Times Square in 1922. Little more than 10 years ago they were overcrowded, unhygienic and often dangerous bed and breakfast shelters for homeless people, of whom there are about 44,000 in New York, with 1,800 rough sleepers estimated to be in Manhattan.

Half the residents in Common Ground properties used to be homeless, the other half are low-income workers. Whether receiving welfare or salary cheques, residents spend one-third of their income on rent. At Times Square a resident may not earn more than $30,000 a year, but the average income for both groups is $20,000 and the average monthly rent is $650. Accommodation for the 1,600 residents in both properties consists of simple, attractive, airy studio apartments.

Workers tend to reflect the areas in which the hotels stand: office workers, catering staff, hospital auxiliary staff, actors and musicians (Times Square, appropriately, has a rehearsal room).

Common Ground was the inspiration of Roseanne Haggerty, founder and president, who launched the Times Square project in 1991 within a year of conceiving the idea when working for Catholic Charities, one of the country's largest voluntary bodies.

"I'd worked with poor people," she says, "and I thought, 'what about a scheme that would offer attractive accommodation to a wider range of people so that you'd make a more mixed community, with different incomes and social status?' People would live together, get to know one another, mix with other people whom they'd not otherwise know."

Haggerty was also motivated by the fact that homeless people are disproportionate users of services: they are more likely to have a physical disability, a mental health problem or to have been in prison.

Her conception and the squalid, decaying and bankrupt state of Times Square coincided: she raised money to buy it through tax refunds, charitable foundations and private investors.

The city's departments responsible for health, mental illness, homeless people and HIV/Aids contract the Center for Urban Community Services (CUCS) to provide social services to those living in supported accommodation. The housing department pays Common Ground a subsidy, together with some federal funding, to bridge the gap between its costs and what it gets in rent. And it does give value for money: while a shelter space costs the public purse $23,000 a year and a state psychiatric bed $250,000, a home with Common Ground is $11,400 a year.

All properties offer social services and there are specialists in substance abuse and HIV/Aids. Times Square also has a part-time nurse and a psychologist. Therapeutic activity specialists help residents' social and educational activity. Other health care services - hospitals and GPs - are in the community because the aim is to help residents to rejoin the community. This means making use of health services as much as any other service so that their lives do not depend on where they live.

Social worker Annette Ruperto recounts the tale of an alcoholic in his early forties who relapsed four times in six months. In a conventional tenancy he would have been evicted; here, CUCS could work with him. He stopped drinking and remains a tenant.


Other services include six-week courses on budgeting, credit, money management and running a bank account. Both hotels have a gym, a dark room and a computer lab. At Times Square, there are regular art shows (Common Ground employs a curator) where neighbours can also exhibit, which earn income for the residents.

Haggerty says Common Ground has proven that "we can't build our way out of homelessness". It is also about making use of existing properties. That the agency's many awards include those for architecture and presentation proves the point.

Common Ground is involved with local communities, working with organisations including community boards, precinct councils and local business groups. Some residents sit on boards and committees.

The charity rents space to ice cream company Ben & Jerry's, coffee chain Starbucks and various delicatessens; in return they employ Common Ground residents.

CUCS has its own job-finding career network. Common Ground also recruits from within: about one-third of its 180 staff used to be homeless residents.

"We have a strong philosophy," says Haggerty, "about giving people back their self-respect and, if possible, getting them back into work. But we have pulled back from doing employment work directly except to recruit to the organisation."

And this philosophy is evident in the fact that a certain number of apartments in all Common Ground's new properties will be set aside for residents who are looking for work. In the organisation's new Christopher's accommodation in New York, 20 of the 207 apartments will be reserved for just this purpose.

Common Ground has done more than simply reduce the homeless population of New York and make affordable homes available to low-paid workers: it has also married imagination and creativity with social change.

The Art  of Survival   

Edward Harkewicz is a tall, quietly spoken, slightly stooped man who lived in Brooklyn for 13 years before becoming homeless. Since his early twenties he has also suffered from depression. He was diagnosed as having both a borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder. He had an alcohol problem but has abstained for 22 years. His illness forced him to retire as a psychological researcher on disability benefits when he was 40.  

At Common Ground he has taken up art and writing. Now aged 58, he still attends hospital for group and individual psychotherapy and it was through the hospital's psychiatric programme that he came to Times Square in October 2000.  

He says: "When I was working I had my own apartment and lived a functional life. Being here has allowed me to be independent so far as housing goes. It's also made me not get in the depressive state I would otherwise have been in. It's a community here, which is important to me. It allows people to work together and help others and understand each other's problems, and also have support in time of a crisis. 

"I understand my limitations better. I don't stress myself. I know that I can never drink again because that sets off demons that make me manic and depressed. I realise that I have to be on psychotropic medication for my brain to function properly and I have seen now that I have developed talents - writing and painting - which I never gave myself credit for. I thought I'd be a university professor but it didn't happen because, well, it just didn't happen. That doesn't worry me now."