New Hope has grown by leaps and bounds over the last five years, and despite many challenges, we are helping more people in more places throughout Miami‐Dade County than ever before.

In 2017 we overcame Housing and Urban Development's pivot away from offering transitional housing to the local homeless continuums by successfully lobbying the Florida legislature for a special appropriation for treatment beds. Partnering with hundreds of other community‐based organizations, we received funding for outpatient and residential treatment services for the indigent population in South‐Dade, successfully submitting an application for funding of peer support services and residential treatment beds from the local DCF managing entity – South Florida Behavioral Health Network – for the first time ever.

Looking to diversify our funding sources further still, in 2018 we again were successful in our application to the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement 25 clinical treatment beds under their Homeless Veterans Grant and Per‐Diem Program. Later that year we partnered with Baptist Health South Florida to fund two direct‐placement treatment beds for individuals discharging from their local ERs and hospitals. We also established a new position designed to help our clients find medical homes in the community and provide a supply of bridge medications in situations where they would be unable to pay for them on their own.

New Hope’s expansion continued with yet another successful application for residential treatment in 2019. This time we successfully applied under the Health Resources and Services Administration Request for Application for Ryan White Part A Substance Abuse Treatment Beds. Our expansion continued not just in the depth, but also in the diversity, of our services: New Hope is now contracted by the Homeless Trust to offer targeted street outreach and rapid re‐housing to those suffering from substance use disorders who migrated into tent encampments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even as New Hope achieved a key strategic priority in diversifying its funding sources across federal, state and local levels, the coming of COVID-19 in March 2020 had the potential to close our doors. If not addressed in a strategic and conservative manner, COVID may have meant that many of our staff and clients could have suffered far worse outcomes. But New Hope rose to the challenge, recognizing very early the severity of the coming pandemic. Working with Larkin Hospital, we implemented a testing operation that allowed us to utilize quarantine and isolation beds set aside for our target population. The Homeless Trust of Miami‐Dade County gave us the flexibility we needed to keep our staff and clients as safe as possible. Unfortunately, we did not make it through the pandemic completely unscathed; we did lose our beloved board member, Rev. Aida Diego, in December 2021. We mourn her loss knowing she undoubtedly would have encouraged us to look forward with our heads held high, ready to carry out our mission with great care and compassion.