June 22, 2007
SURPLUS CITY
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The City's cup runneth over, but not for homeless people with HIV |
On June 12, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn shook hands on a $59 billion dollar budget agreement for Fiscal Year 2007-2008. Three days later the City Council voted to adopt the budget package. That put City Hall in a jovial mood, and, with one notable exception, NYC's HIV/AIDS community had reason to smile, too. HIV/AIDS funding was more substantial than it has been in recent years, thanks to an unprecedented $4 billion budget surplus and a united HIV/AIDS community.
"From a historical point of view, it's a large amount of money. The City has funded a lot of new initiatives," said Hilda Melore, coordinator of Voices of Women of Color. "They've continued to support initiatives that prove to have some benefits to the community at large."
All HIV/AIDS programs brought to the table during negotiations were restored, enhanced or approved. Click here for a chart explaining HIV/AIDS-related funding included in this year's city budget and here for access to Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's entire budget. This year the budget process itself was a tad more transparent than the year before, and the budget document is certainly better organized and more informative than ever. And Council Finance has done a stellar job articulating the exact details of the programs.
The HIV/AIDS Outreach Enhancement received an additional $534,000. With a state match, it will be able to increase rapid HIV testing and HIV outreach targeting the Bronx. The Faith Based HIV/AIDS Prevention received an enhancement of $640,000, which will include a new funding allocation for an initiative to support women with HIV/AIDS. The Harm Reduction Initiative got a $500,000 enhancement, for a total of $3.4 million with a state match to provide overdose prevention education and support resuscitation training and needle exchange programs.
An exciting new program, the HIV Prevention and Health Literacy for Seniors, featured in The Update story "Gray Area", received its entire $1 million funding request to provide HIV prevention and education for older adults, aging services providers and health care providers. Dam Tietz, Executive Director of AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, one of the organizations that will develop the curriculum, was overjoyed, though he and others involved in implementation don't look forward to finding funding until the city dollars arrive this January or February. "We're going to have to carry it on our own nickel for a while," Tietz said.
HASA for...some?Throughout the year, Speaker Quinn has opposed the HASA for ALL campaign to expand full HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) benefits to low-income, asymptomatic people with HIV.
"It's a very radical shift to decide that housing is the best prevention tool possible," Quinn told the Gay City Times in May. Quinn has also said HASA for All would set a bad precedent by implying that the city ought to house people with cancer and diabetes as well.
It came as somewhat of a surprise, then, that the City included $750,000 to provide housing to 34 people living with HIV and currently residing in the shelter system through its Housing for Homeless People Living with HIV budget item. The money appears to be an admission that housing is a vital necessity for poor people living with HIV-except that the paltry $750,000 is a slap in the face to the 1,000 other folks with HIV in the shelter system that it doesn't cover. "It's almost not even worth asking how the Council plans to dole out these funds," said terri smith-caronia, Housing Works NYC public policy director. "Will it be a poor people's lottery? Will 34 people have to prove a 'need'? When we asked around, no one seemed to know. In fact most were surprised to see this item."
Smith-caronia was appalled that this $750,000 would be the response to a clearly pressing need and urged the Speaker to take seriously the health needs of poor New Yorkers living with HIV.
Despite the $750,000 insult to poor people with HIV, the budget process was generally considered a success. While the surplus is one reason so many programs received funding, credit also has to go to the broad coalition of HIV/AIDS advocates. Several months earlier, nearly a dozen coalitions representing a variety of constituencies within New York City's HIV/AIDS community came together in an historic meeting. Their aim was to inform each other about their respective budget requests, avoid duplications and develop mutual support. The coalitions also learned how to navigate a somewhat complicated budget process so that items would not fall off the plate due to a simple process error. Eliminating the squabbling of groups fighting for the same pieces of the pie has proven a recipe for success.