On a summer morning in 1992, Henry Buhl was leaving his loft on Greene Street in SoHo, when a local homeless man asked him for $20. He figured: if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. So Henry offered the man a job sweeping the sidewalk in front of his building, then rallied the stores on his block to do the same.

Within a few months, word had spread. Recovering homeless men and women were eager to accept work cleaning the streets of SoHo to rebuild their lives. Henry began to accept referrals from homeless outreach organizations and the SoHo Partnership was born, followed by the TriBeCa and NoHo/Bowery Partnerships. In 1997, the Association of Community Employment Programs was created as an umbrella organization to unify the local initiatives.

Today we serve individuals from over 40 shelters and treatment programs from all five boroughs. We have consolidated the neighborhood partnerships under the name ACE, and we currently sweep in SoHo, TriBeCa, NoHo/Bowery, Nolita, Bedford/Downing and the West Village.