Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance

Description

The Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance (CMHA) has a twenty- year history of providing direct services and advocacy in the community on issues of access to affordable housing, homelessness prevention and the coordination of quality services and shelter for homeless and at-risk families and individuals to assist them to move beyond shelter to self-sufficiency. CMHA formed in 1994 as a merger of: the Housing Information Center, which provided direct services, and the Committee on Homelessness, which focused on public education and advocacy. Since its inception, CMHA has remained true to the vision of successfully blending these two unique missions.

CMHA plays a pivotal role in providing leadership and serving as the primary convener in efforts to strengthen our community's homeless service delivery system and to increase and preserve the supply of affordable housing. CMHA's advocacy promotes planning and partnerships between service providers in developing strategies and long-term solutions that promote systemic changes to combat homelessness and increase access to affordable housing.

The cornerstone of CMHA's mission is to not exist simply to continue to provide more services, but to get to the root causes and reduce the need for our services in the long run. Each of our direct service programs inform our advocacy efforts and keep us grounded in the realities that our clients face on a daily basis. In turn, our advocacy efforts have helped to mobilize a unified community response to the broader issues facing low and moderate- income households in Worcester County.