It’s August. BRAKING AIDS^® Ride is coming up in less than five weeks, and I’ll be riding my bicycle, The Blue Streak, from Philadelphia to NYC. The route is new, but my goals are the same: to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and homelessness and to raise at least $20,000 to support Housing Works and its lifesaving services. 

I’ve been doing BRAKING AIDS^® Ride since 2008, in memory of two family friends who died of AIDS-related illnesses—Dennis, who died in 1987, and Curtis, who died in 2003. In that time, I’ve raised $260,000, and with your help, I’ll hit $280,000 or more this year.

For anyone having a TL;DR moment, here’s the donation link to help me get there: https://give.classy.org/mika2024

For all you readers out there, here’s the rundown for BRAKING AIDS^® Ride 2024:

Why Housing Works Again and Again

I keep showing up to support Housing Works because they provide transformative services to over 15,000 of the most vulnerable New Yorkers among us every single year—housing, job training, health care (including primary care, dental, and mental health, not only HIV-specific services), free legal help, substance use treatment, and more. I trust this organization to do what’s right, regardless of who is in the White House or in Congress and irrespective of what recent court-decision calamity has come down. Housing Works remains committed to social justice and advocacy andcontinues to fight for what’s crucial for those most in need. They’ve been fighting the fights that need fighting since their founding in 1990, and they’ll do it after election season has come and gone.

What Housing Works Has Been Up to in 2024

Here are some Housing Works initiatives from the past year:

• Housing for justice-involved individuals, including three transitional hotels; resident access to case management, substance use treatment, harm reduction services, and primary care; help in finding permanent housing; and a broader advocacy campaign to shut down Riker’s Island

• Rapid-response services to address the migrant crisis, such as two “City Sanctuary” hotels for migrant families with children; case management; and legal services to apply for asylum

• Developing new housing—67 units for formerly homeless individuals (59 for people with HIV) and 44 low-income units in Hell’s Kitchen, and 22 supportive housing units and 17 low-income units on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn

• Two new health care clinics, one in Hell’s Kitchen and one in East Harlem, for a total of six federally-qualified health centers (FQHCs) in Manhattan and Brooklyn

• Piloting new, groundbreaking tools to end the AIDS epidemic—long-acting injectable antiretroviral medications, which enable patients to shift from taking a daily pill to receiving six injections per year to achieve treatment adherence and stay healthy

• Advocacy for Overdose Prevention Centers, a cutting-edge model that saves lives and prevents HIV and Hepatitis C transmission

Please donate today! Donations of all sizes are welcome, but a gift of $250 or more is especially helpful and will go a long way toward helping me reach my $20,000 fundraising goal. (If you can cover the 4% processing fee so 100% of your gift goes to Housing Works, even better.) Please donate as much as you’re able, and together we’ll do our part to in the fight to end AIDS and homelessness.

Some info on what your gift funds:

$250—Pays for 50 hygiene kits for homeless youth, with daily essentials like soap, deodorant, and a pill-sized tablet cloth that expands into a towel when you add water

$600—Covers the cost for 50 rapid HIV tests

$750—Feeds 375 homeless youth during evening drop-in hours at Housing Works’ East New York Health Center

$1,000—Provides 1 month of supportive housing for HIV-positive individuals

$2,000—Completely outfits 7 new single-unit apartments with household items

$3,500—Funds a bus and stipends to send 54 advocates to Albany

$5,000—Funds a bus and stipends to send 54 advocates to Washington, DC, and provides bail money for 10 advocates to take an arrest for civil disobedience

DONATE VIA MY FUNDRAISING PAGE: https://give.classy.org/mika2024

Thank you for your ongoing support and for being a part of my BRAKING AIDS^® journey.