Mission & History

Mission

UNITY of Greater New Orleans is a nonprofit organization leading a collaborative of over 60 agencies providing housing and services to the homeless. Our mission is to coordinate community partnerships to prevent, reduce, and end homelessness.  UNITY is designated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to lead community-wide strategies to end homelessness in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish and raises funds for 48 of its member agencies to provide an array of housing and services for the homeless.  UNITY also assists its member agencies to implement nationally proven strategies to reduce homelessness, trains service providers, and performs programmatic monitoring and evaluation of its agencies’ programs.  In addition to the provision of housing and services by the collaborative, UNITY conducts homeless outreach on the streets and in abandoned buildings, rehabs apartment buildings into homes for those who are homeless or low-income, helps the public locate affordable housing, and advocates for public policy to prevent and reduce homelessness.

History

UNITY of Greater New Orleans was founded in 1992 following an intensive six-month strategic planning process that brought together for the first time New Orleans area homeless service providers, the public sector, the business community, and homeless persons. The process created a community-wide system to coordinate a vast array of programs and services to prevent, reduce, and end homelessness in our community.  One of the oldest and most successful collaborative organizations in New Orleans, UNITY is the recipient of the national John J. Gunther Award for Organizational Excellence from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Most recently, UNITY was selected from 9,000 organizations nationwide to receive the 2010 NonProfit Sector Achievement Award by the National Alliance to End Homelessness.