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March 7, 2008
STUDIES SHOW...HOUSING WORKS!
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CHHP participant Mary Pelts at the conference. Her uplifting story is recounted in the Wall Street Journal |
On the second day of the National Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit, investigators from two major multi-year studies released preliminary data showing that providing housing for homeless people living with HIV/AIDS improves health outcomes and saves millions in medical costs. The Housing Research Summit is convened by the National AIDS Housing Coalition in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The four-year Chicago Housing for Health Partnership (CHHP) study, the subject of an article in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, followed 407 chronically ill homeless people, more than a third of whom had HIV. Half of the study participants were placed in housing with case management, while the other half relied on Chicago's existing network of services. The group that received case management and housing assistance spent significantly less time in hospitals, emergency rooms and nursing homes and experienced improved health...
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BUDGET BASICS
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Kink and the protesting posse |
Housing Works clients and staff made dozens of visits to the offices of State elected officials this week to urge them to support aspects of Governor Eliot Spitzer's FY 2008-2009 budget and include items in the Senate and Assembly budgets that would provide crucial support for poor people living with HIV/AIDS.
As the Update reported earlier this year, there are lots of wins in Spitzer's budget, including a rate increase for the state share of AIDS Adult Day Health Care (ADHC) centers and restoration of SSI "invisibility" to families who receive state enhanced rental assistance and have a child with a disability. Spitzer also wants to lift the 20-year freeze on Article 31 licenses. Doing so would address the appalling dearth of mental heath services for people with HIV/AIDS...
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IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED...
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Give me an ETHA! |
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) are offering an amendment to the FY 2009 budget to set aside $500 million in a reserve fund for the Early Treatment for HIV Act (ETHA) Demonstration project. The project is the first step on the road to ETHA itself, which would allow states to extend Medicaid coverage to low-income people with HIV before they became disabled by AIDS, something that current Medicaid eligibility requires.
ETHA is of incredible importance: It would greatly reduce the death rate for people with HIV on Medicaid and help relieve the financial burden on other programs, including the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. That's why it's crucial for you to call your senator and ask them to support the $500 million reserve fund...
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PROUD TO DO NOTHING?
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Holley shows her Irish (and HASA for All) pride |
At the St. Pat's for All Parade last Sunday in Sunnyside, Queens, grand marshall Christine Quinn won cheers when she praised the LGBT-inclusive event (she's crusaded against its homophobic 5th Avenue cousin for years). But marchers from Housing Works, the New York City AIDS Housing Network and CitiWide Harm Reduction were on hand to remind the openly gay and openly Irish City Council Speaker that even as she marched for equality, she was leaving poor people with HIV behind.
Fifteen representatives of those AIDS groups used an invitation Housing Works received to participate in the parade to highlight Quinn's opposition to the HASA for All Act, which would extend rental assistance and other benefits to poor people living with HIV before they get sick. Currently, the city's HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) requires people with the virus to get gravely ill before they can access they benefits. The HASA for All marchers handed out pale green fliers bearing Quinn's image with the words "PROUD TO DO NOTHING?" over her eyes and mouth and on the flipside, her shocking quote that "if we housed people with HIV, then we would have to house homeless people with cancer and diabetes, too."Read the rest: "PROUD TO DO NOTHING?"
RELIGIOUS EXCHANGE
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Mary Jo Iozzio of the Society of Christian Ethics speaking
on needle exchange |
With the chances of repealing the federal funding ban on needle exchange programs looking better than ever, religious leaders gathered in D.C. on Tuesday for a historic meeting about the moral and religious arguments for allowing states to use federal HIV/AIDS prevention dollars for needle exchange and to make plans to lobby members of Congress on the issue.
The Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative (IDPI) and the Drug Policy Alliance organized a panel discussion called "The Moral Imperative for Needle Exchange: Religious Leaders Speak Out" that included representatives from the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations in Washington, D.C., the Peace Baptist Church, as well as the Society of Christian Ethics which is comprised of nearly 1,000 Christian ethics professors.Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C. at large) also attended...
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TURNING THE TIDE IN TAIWAN
lessons of social enterprise
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King and Ai-Lan |
In 2006, 22 Taiwanese people living with HIV/AIDS were facing lawful eviction from a shelter in a building rented by an AIDS group called Harmony Home. Why? Because neighbors didn't want people with HIV/AIDS in the neighborhood.
Fortunately, this heinous event was reversed by Taiwan's high court in 2007. What's more, the Harmony Home incident prompted the Taiwanese government to pass the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Prevention and Patients' Rights Protection Act in July 2007, securing the rights of HIV-positive people to housing, care, and equal protection under the law. But Taiwanese Deputy Minister of Labor Affairs Tsao Ai-Lan believes more than the law needs changing in her home country...
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