Earlier this year, the de Blasio administration unveiled a program to try to curtail the high number of homeless people sleeping on the streets. Now, City Hall is already touting some preliminary results. Our Courtney Gross filed this report.

Colin O'Rourke was not used to having a roof over his head or keys in his hand.

Before September, he slept here — on the steps of a church on the Upper West Side.

QUESTION: "Every night for two years?"

"Two years and seven weeks, yeah," O'Rourke said. "Those seven weeks are important." 

He now has his own studio apartment in the same neighborhood.

He is one of the 690 people the city says it has found permanent or transitional housing for from March through October. That number is thanks to its program called HomeStat.

"When they opened the door and showed me my place, my jaw dropped," O'Rourke said.

"We're focused on an individual case by case approach," said Human Resource Administration Commissioner Steven Banks . "That's what's been missing for many, many years."

The program sends outreach workers across the city every day looking for the street homeless.

The city tracks what they are doing, where these workers have made contact with people or who they should be following up with.

People like O'Rourke who chose the streets instead of shelter for years and years.

"You begin to degrade," O'Rourke said. "No matter how tight you are running your ship you start to degrade. It's that type of life. I knew I was better than that. I wanted to ask more of myself. So I just asked for help."

This is the type of building the city is trying to place street homeless people in. It's called supportive housing and it means people are getting services along with their stay. 

Last week, city hall announced it awarded contracts to open 550 more of these units.

"On average it takes four and half to five months to bring people off the streets that's why we have doubled the outreach workers that are out there everyday," said HRA Commissioner Banks.

The problem is still persistent.

The last time the city counted in November, the city found more than 2,700 people were sleeping on the street.

By that time, O'Rourke was living here — one less person without a bed.