July 27, 2007

HASA FOR ALL DAY

Taylor would have benefitted from HASA for All

All in all, yesterday was a momentous day for HASA for All. Thursday morning, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn met with Housing Works, GMHC and the New York City AIDS Housing Coalition--an important step toward making HASA for All a reality. Just a few hours later, New York City's Ryan White Planning Council threw its enthusiastic support behind the campaign. "It wasn't a perfect day," summarized Charles King, Housing Works president and CEO, "but one thing is certain: HASA for All is gathering steam."

At their last meeting until October, the New York City Ryan White Planning Council voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to support landmark HASA for All legislation for New York City by signing on to a community support letter. (NYC Department of Health officials abstained from the vote.)

The Planning Council also voted to write their own letter to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, laying out reams of data presented and developed in official proceedings that demonstrate the importance of housing to HIV prevention and health care efforts and requesting that the Speaker convene City Council hearings on the legislation.

Planning Council members—many of whom are people living with HIV/AIDS—include passionate supporters of HASA for All. "This is a magnificent way to end the year," said retiring Council member Rev. Terry Troia, who seconded a motion from Felicia Carroll of Housing Works for the body to support HASA for All. "We know that HASA can add years to someone's life—HASA for All is just good public health policy."

HASA for All would extend full HASA benefits to poor New Yorkers living with HIV—currently, people must progress to an AIDS diagnosis to get those full benefits, which, ironically could keep them from progressing to AIDS in the first place. The expansion of HASA benefits would potentially help some 9,000 people with HIV get the housing, transportation, nutrition and other benefits essential to their long term health.

The Planning Council has heard testimony over the past year from PLWHAs about the human impact HASA for All legislation could have on tens of thousands of New Yorkers. At Thursday's meeting, Housing Works client Frederick Taylor was one of many who spoke about how he had HIV and got sicker because he was homeless.

"I had to spend a whole year turning tricks because without a roof over my head I couldn't go into housing because my t-cell count wasn't low enough," said Taylor. "After a year they gave me HASA. There are a lot of individuals whose T-cell counts aren't low enough. Why doesn't Quinn spend just one week in a shelter? Then she'll know what it's like."

While she probably won't take it that far, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said Thursday that she's interested in more details about the benefits of HASA for All, cracking the door open a bit more than she has in recent months.

Quinn met at City Hall with representatives from Housing Works, the New York AIDS Housing Coalition and GMHC and told the group that, while she's still opposed to the comprehensive legislation and isn't sold on housing as an HIV prevention tool, she's interested in hearing more evidence on the benefits of the proposed legislation to extend HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) services and benefits to low-income New Yorkers with asymptomatic HIV infection.

Study after study—including a few from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University — have demonstrated the benefits of AIDS housing as a cost-effective and life-saving public health intervention. Quinn—a former tenant's rights organizer and the first female and openly gay New York City council speaker—should be interested in detailed reports on housing, HIV health care and HIV prevention here in New York City by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and others finding that housing status is the single most powerful predictor of connections to HIV health care and prevention and that and that the HIV/AIDS death rate is seven times higher for homeless adults and nine times higher for homeless women than it is for those who are stably housed.

While Quinn isn't (yet) sold on HASA for All, she did provide a few concrete proposals to advocates at Thursday's City Hall meeting:

• $500,000 in new funding for 23 long-term housing units for homeless people with HIV (on top of the $750,000 included in the Fiscal Year 2008 City budget);
• A new transitional case management initiative for HIV-positive clients in shelters run by the NYC Department of Homeless Services;
• New funding for Home Base, a DHS homelessness prevention program, to dedicate a staff member at each Home Base site to work with clients living with HIV who are at risk of becoming homeless or are leaving the shelter system.

HIV/AIDS advocates at the meeting were disappointed with Quinn's proposals. "Any additional housing is a good thing, and we'll take it," said Charles King, President and CEO of Housing Works. "But what's being proposed it's a drop in the bucket. It's nibbling around the edges."

King said case management services are already provided by dozens of city agencies, and urged Quinn to prod DHS to establish strong linkage agreements with those providers and put the proposed case management money towards more AIDS housing.

But despite the dissatisfaction, everyone at the meeting—including Quinn—wants to keep up the dialogue.

"Today's was an important meeting that brought people to the table on an issue that affects thousands of New Yorkers. On some things, the group and I agreed, and on others we disagreed," Quinn told the Update. "Moving forward, I hope to work together towards developing solutions that will address the needs of homeless HIV-positive New Yorkers."

And there was unity among the advocates that they won't settle for anything less than HASA for All. "All partners have the strong belief that people living with HIV must have housing in order to survive and thrive," said Robert Bank, Chief Operating Officer at Gay Men's Health Crisis. "We're going to stand together to get what our community so desperately needs."

The Housing Works AIDS Issues Update is reported, written and edited by Diana Scholl, David Thorpe, Phil Fox Rose, Christine Campbell, terri smith-caronia and Housing Works staff. Send your feedback, leads and story ideas to d.scholl@housingworks.org.

You can reach us by phone at 212-967-1500 x168, by fax at 212-868-4222, and by email at d.scholl@housingworks.org. Housing Works provides housing, advocacy and services to homeless people living with AIDS and HIV. Housing Works is the nation's largest community-based AIDS organization and the nation's largest minority-controlled AIDS organization.

Go to http://www.hwupdate.org/update/subscribe_update.html to subscribe.